


flightless bird, american mouth

by sidnihoudini



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Embarrassing Speeches, Exes, Groundhog Day, M/M, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 16:39:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2588696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He watches Zach and Miles dance to Jackson 5 from the shadows of the olive bar.  They’re both so vibrant that it makes Chris’ fingers curl, nails digging into the flesh of his palm.  He would never say it out loud - hopefully - but the more that he drinks, the more he realizes he wants to be there, in Miles position.  He wants to dance.  He wants to look at Zach that way.  He wants everyone to know that he didn’t fuck up, that Zach chose him.</p><p>He wants to be vibrant, too.</p><p>“Sanguine,” Chris murmurs to absolutely nobody at all, before he takes another sip of his scotch.</p><p>That’s got to be at least a five dollar word.  He’s gonna have to check with JJ later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	flightless bird, american mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Ahh, it's finally done! After many, many weeks of aimlessly writing and editing, editing, editing I am so happy to have taken part in Pinto BB. My first ever big bang completed successfully!
> 
> Many, many, many (an infinite number of them) thanks to the awesomest artist and soundtrack-er ever, manghahabi, for compiling an incredible combination of songs to go along with my story. I really appreciate all of the thought you put into everything, and I gotta say I lucked out by getting you :)
> 
> Also some more thanks to everyone at the Pinto bar for listening to the bits and pieces of this story that I was first posting when I became enamoured by the idea of drunk Chris/married Zach. You are all the bomb.
> 
> Anyways thanks for reading my story, I also really appreciate any comments or feedback you may have <3.

_stole me a dog-eared map  
and called for you everywhere_

*

It’s a gorgeous night.

Upstate New York in the late summer is absolutely unreal. Magical, almost, the dusky night that falls over the stretches of vineyard that surround them; the twilight blue skies that fade into purple at the horizon, sun long gone, even though the moon has not yet fully made its appearance.

It’s the kind of night that you would write a song about. Dragonflies, butterflies, glasses of white wine and twinkly lights all strung up in the trees. Each table top is covered in clean white linen, beautiful centerpieces made of flowers and twigs, silverware glinting in the low candlelight. Everything is thoughtful, and purposeful, and just as enchanting as the night skies that fall around them.

But the sky is nothing compared to Zach.

He’s relaxed, happy - palpably so, almost radiating with it - as he sits at the head table with a wide, proud smile stretched across his face. His eyes are bright even though the sun has already set, warm, familiar brown and grounded, reflecting all of the hanging lights that are strung up above them, throughout the bones of the event tent. Every time Zach laughs he tilts his head back, letting him move with the feeling, waves heavy with contentment that wash over him like a tide.

His arm is strong looking and rested along the back of Miles’ chair as he leans over, still smiling, trying to get closer to Miles’ ear as Zach’s brother launches into the latter half of his speech. Joe is joking about how he never thought he would see the day that Zach up and got married, especially before him.

It’s all very funny and very sweet, and when it’s over Joe raises his wine glass in the air and makes a toast to the happy couple.

“So, I’d like to make a toast using a quote from my favorite set of twins in the United States of America,” Joe intones, clearly more on this side of drunk as he raises his wine glass over the table top and looks up, into the bright lights that are shining down at him. “As the Olsen twins said in _It Takes Two, ‘Love is that can’t-eat, can’t-sleep, reach for the stars, over the fence, World Series kinda stuff.’_ I love you guys. Congratulations, and cheers!”

Chris raises his wine glass as the crowd laughs and echoes Joe’s “cheers!”

He can see Zach’s mom crying from her spot at one of the front tables, where she’s working on her glass of red wine in one hand with a crumpled up piece of kleenex in the other. She’s so slight she almost disappears behind the floral arrangement in the middle of the table, but Chris can still see how proud she looks from here. She’s watching Zach like he might disappear if she takes her eyes off of him.

Licking his lips, Chris looks back down at the tabletop in front of him. He hasn’t touched the dinner they were served after Zach and Miles walked into the room, to a round of applause. Instead, Chris has been working on the glass of liquor that he can never seem to get to the bottom of. Open bars, he muses, smiling a little to himself under the glare of the lights.

“Anyways, nobody wants to hear me talk anymore. Everyone say _shut up, Joe!_ ” Joe cracks, waiting for the lull before everyone laughs and then parrots back, _‘shut up, Joe!’_ Joe grins at the attention before accidentally bumping the microphone, making it squeal over the sound system as he turns around to face Chris. “Well, guys. Like the meat on a turkey, Chris and I are pretty much killing it here, as best man and other-other best man. I think he’s probably the white meat, though. Anyways, let’s get a speech from my space astronaut!”

Chris’ mouth pulses in a knee-jerk smile as a swell of clapping comes from those arranged around the dinner tables in front of them.

Most are familiar faces - people that he and Zach have both worked with, people that Chris had met through Zach over the many years of their knowing one another - and Chris tries to take a quick inventory, as he glances from side to side and then throws back the last mouthful of his scotch before he accepts the microphone. Joe sticks it in front of his mouth, so Chris reaches for it, feeling his fingers wrap around the microphone base before he hears his breath and the sound of himself clearing his throat echo over the sound system.

As he stands up, he realize that the people watching him look eager, anticipation on their faces as they all lean forward, just waiting for something beautiful to come out of Chris’ mouth. Chris smiles without showing his teeth, and reaches back to push his chair away as he stands. He sees JJ and his girls, Zoe and her husband, Katie - Chris’ own sister, traitorous flesh and bone - all looking back at him.

It’s a full house, and everyone that Chris has ever cared for is about to watch him go down in flames.

“Thank you for referencing that beautiful moment in nineties pop culture, Joseph,” Chris intones, pressing his mouth too close to the microphone as he looks over at Joe, from the corner of his eye. Joe grins wide - Quinto smile - and leans back in his chair, offering his wine glass up in another toast as the crowd laughs. Chris reaches down for his own glass, now empty, and raises it up to wiggle in the air. He looks towards the bar, and adds, “Gonna need another one of these, by the way, guys. Your in house space captain is truly awful at public speaking.”

One of the waiters runs up, waving to the crowd like it’s a planned bit as he takes Chris’ empty and hustles to the back of the room, where the open bar awaits. As the crowd laughs again, Chris chances a look over at Zach. Zach is watching him back, his expression level, though still amused as their eyes catch and his lips flicker in another smile. It makes Chris’ stomach flip.

He swallows, throat suddenly tight, and chuckles into the microphone as he turns back to the room, one eyebrow arching as he starts by asking, “It’s a beautiful night, right? New York is an incredible place. Just insane. I knew it would change Zach’s life the minute he left California - I mean, it’s The Empire State, right? It just _sounds_ awesome. Hey Joe, back me up on this. You still live in LA, too.”

“It smells here, but it’s a comforting smell,” Joe agrees, voice monotone and distorted as Chris sticks the microphone in his face.

Beside them Zach laughs, face contorting with amusement as he leans forward and rests his fingers against his forehead, offering Miles an _oh my god, I’m sorry_ look as he sits back up and grins, looking back over to where Joe and Chris are still nodding at one another.

“Thanks, man. That’s great service,” Chris adds, as another scotch appears in front of him and the waiter waves to the crowd, keeping the joke going, before he runs off and disappears into the sidelines as everyone continues to laugh, clearly amused with the proceedings. Chris weighs the microphone in his hand, studying it, and then brings it back up to his mouth. “Never thought Zach would marry a model. That was kind of my jam, you know - long hair, long legs, not so great fashion sense, but that’s why they have people to dress them.”

The crowd laughs again, this time offering a few “awws” up for Miles as Chris reaches forward for his drink. He twists it around, wrist bending, to take a generous sip before he gets back to talking.

“One moment for a PSA, here. If anyone out there can’t decide on a drink, go for the DW, s’good,” Chris announces, smacking his lips, trying to savor the hot taste of alcohol in his mouth. “But anyway, scotch aside, I remember the first night that Zach introduced me to Miles. It was New York - beautiful New York, right - and I had no idea who the fuck the guy was. That’s funny, right? Well, it was funny at the time.”

As Chris takes another sip of scotch, he wipes his nose with the curve of the hand holding the microphone, and then barrels on, a sinking feeling where his stomach used to be.

Chris screws up his face at the memory, and then continues, “I guess you had to be there - but anyway - looking back, I guess Miles kind of changed Zach’s life forever. Wish I had known then, right? I got to know Miles too, eventually, I mean, getting to know someone is always hard when you’re on opposite sides of the continent. It’s hard enough for me to keep up with Zach - sometimes he’s just this kind of guy that I used to know.”

“But, you know, Miles stuck around, like, well, I guess I’d use the comparison of a bad cold,” Chris continues, gaining momentum as he stares out at the crowd, now too drunk to realize that nobody is really laughing along anymore. “The more he stuck around, the more I learned about him, and you know what? He’s fucking - he’s hilarious, and so smart, and such a nice, genuine guy. He’s an old soul, I mean that, he’s absolutely perfect for Zach, and I guess that California was a lot of things, but I’m just glad that New York gave him what he finally wanted.”

When Chris looks out at the crowd, his sight lazy, vision blurred from the alcohol, he focuses in on Zoe first, sitting there in her beautiful dress, with her bare shoulders and purple fabric gathered up around her neckline. She’s wide-eyed, shocked and sad, both hands pressed against her mouth as she sits rigid in her seat, fingers tangled together, angled towards Chris like they’re steepled in prayer.

“So, fuck it. Everything’s great,” He babbles, shaking his head and taking a step back. He can’t look at Zoe anymore, he just can’t deal with that shit right now. Pressing his mouth back against the curve of the microphone, Chris stares down at Joe, who is staring back up at him with wide, shocked eyes, and finishes, “Congratulations to the happy couple.”

With that, he hands the microphone back to Joe, leans down to pick his drink back up off of the table, and then throws the rest of it back, cringing as the resulting burn creeps its way down his throat.

“Well. I, uh - beautiful words from an equally beautiful person. I think the sentiment was there, at least,” Joe tries to recover, sounding a little shaky himself as he fumbles his way through the sentence. “How about we watch a slideshow now? I promise it features a funny picture of Zach at eighteen with a bowl cut.”

Teary-eyed, Chris staggers away from the table, trying to recover, trying to brush the feeling off.

~

Chris sits at one of the empty tables after the reception, shredding a monogrammed napkin between his fingers.

“Hey,” Zoe says, her voice soft as she comes up behind him.

He doesn’t look away from where he’s carefully shredding the paper into thin little strips. He doesn’t mean for it to happen, but his eyes start to water at the attentive, concerned tone of her voice. Even his sister had only looked at him sadly, saying _oh, Chris_ before she walked away.

“Are you alright?” She asks, one hand sliding along the back of his chair. She lets go when her hand reaches the end and then comes around to stand in front of him, bending down to kneel at his legs. When Chris finally lets his gaze flicker away from the napkin and to her instead, he feels the tears that had been brimming in his eyes let go, and drip down his face. “Oh my god, _Chris_.”

The way that she’s treating him immediately makes him feel even worse, his stomach hot and sinking low with embarrassment as she looks at him with this concerned expression that haunts her usually warm features. He’s dumb and drunk and maudlin, and she has no right at all being so nice to him right now.

“It’s fine,” He finally says, an embarrassed laugh coming out as he lets go of the napkin to reach up and wipe his cheek, trying to pulse a smile at her as he does so. “Everything is great.”

Zoe frowns at him, and then reaches to grab his hand and hold it between both of hers.

“I’m so sorry, Chris,” She sighs, and Chris doesn’t blame her for not knowing what else to say. The whole night has been a nightmare, full of moments that he can’t quite shake himself out of. Zoe rubs her palm over the back of his hand, and then adds, “Everybody’s back inside because the DJ just started taking requests. John was dancing to Miley when I came out here to find you.”

That startles a real laugh out of Chris. It bubbles up his chest until he hears himself giggling, clearly still drunk as he groans and rolls his free hand against his forehead. After a quiet moment, he asks, “New Miley, or vintage Miley?”

“Vintage,” Zoe answers, lips curled into a wide smile as she leans in, like her answer is a secret. She watches as Chris reaches for his booze glass again - still half full, Chris thinks, ever the optimist - and then offers a smaller, sadder smile when he takes another sip. Her eyes flicker over his face before she adds, “You’ll be okay, baby. You knew tonight was going to be difficult.”

Frowning, Chris spins his glass against the tabletop, and then shakes his head and says, “I shouldn’t have come.”

“You’re Zach’s best man, and one of his closest friends in the world,” Zoe tells him, and Chris knows that she means well, but hearing her say it like that just rubs the salt even further into his already stinging wounds. She levels her gaze at him, and raises her eyebrows as she adds, “He couldn’t have done this without you.”

Chris hiccups and shrugs, “Zach is just fine without me.”

“Yeah, he is,” Zoe agrees easily, patting his hand again. He looks away sharply, his face suddenly hurt, his mouth turning down into a warbly frown as he tries to steady the feeling inside, and keep himself together. She leans forward, and adds, “But that doesn’t make you any less important to him. You’ll always have a piece of him, Chris. No matter what happens.”

Leaning back against the chair, Chris exhales, and closes his eyes.

“While I appreciate the sentiment, it doesn’t really make this any easier,” Chris decides after a moment, opening his eyes to watch her carefully. There’s a steady expression on his face despite the fireworks that are blooming over and over in his chest.

Zoe frowns and pauses, letting her gaze drop to where she’s still holding Chris’ palm, her freshly manicured nails bright and lilac against the tanned back of his hand.

“It isn’t supposed to be easy,” She says finally, her words sounding weighted, careful, balanced - like she’s pressed them around the insides of her mouth to figure out if it’s worth saying anything at all. “The relationship - friendship - that you have with Zach is never going to be easy, and that’s terrible. I know it hurts your heart. But that’s life, Chris, and he is too important to you to not work through this.”

The words make tears prick at the backs of Chris’ eyes again. It isn’t fair and all that he wants to do is sit in a room and listen to his Iron and Wine discography forever.

“I know,” He says after a moment, finally sounding breathless. “I know that.”

~

It’s embarrassing.

The whole night plays out like the shadows on the wall of a haunted house. Every time Chris turns around, there’s one more friend, family member or colleague of Zach’s that Chris used to know. He manages - fumbling through hugs and handshakes, trying desperately to leave a better taste in everyone’s mouth, but it’s a losing battle. Everyone here just looks at him sadly, or not at all.

“I’m in town for a few days, man. Maybe we should grab a beer together or something,” Karl tells him, sounding particularly un-Karl like as they share a one-armed hug near the bar.

It’s the perfect example of the worst parts of tonight. All of these people who knew that he and Zach were romantically involved, the way that they all look at him is devastating. Susan, JJ, Sarah, Hayden: the list goes on and on and on, and Chris hadn’t realized how interwoven he and Zach’s lives had been for that moment in time.

The way they treat him makes Chris feel embarrassed for himself, red faced and edgy as everyone navigates around the emotional minesweeper game Chris had unknowingly begun over dinner and speeches.

He watches Zach and Miles dance to Jackson 5 from the shadows of the olive bar. They’re both so vibrant that it makes Chris’ fingers curl, nails digging into the flesh of his palm. He would never say it out loud - hopefully - but the more that he drinks, the more he realizes he wants to be there, in Miles position. He wants to dance. He wants to look at Zach that way. He wants everyone to know that he didn’t fuck up, that Zach chose him.

He wants to be vibrant, too.

“Sanguine,” Chris murmurs to absolutely nobody at all, before he takes another sip of his scotch.

That’s got to be at least a five dollar word. He’s gonna have to check with JJ later.

~

After the reception, Chris cabs back to the hotel by himself.

For a brief moment outside of the venue, he had entertained thoughts of heading to the nearest bar instead. Lovesick and lost, shoulders hunched together over a smoky bar top somewhere; momentarily, it had all seemed ideal. He, like all of the great men before him, felt that secondary aspiration of simply fucking his sadness out.

But then his body had gone from walking to lurching, and he’d made the executive decision to return to the privacy of his own room.

And now, upon his grand arrival, Chris strips out of his suit, downs two Tylenol dry, and then falls into bed, hoping for the best come morning as the hotel room walls spin in tight circles around him.

Chris replays the night on loop in his head as he tries to fall asleep. The whole event was the equivalent of a slow motion car crash; the kind that you just couldn’t look away from, and as Chris drifts off, the last thing he sees is Zach’s face when he’d stood up to make his toast.

~

For one perfect moment in time, they had been good together.

It had been a blip in the history of the universe; Chris knows that. And it had been months, almost years since Zach had walked away - Chris knows he isn’t the only one who has ever had someone leave him. There are a lot of other people in the world who had simply been “good together” with someone else, too. But good didn’t make it right, and he knows he’s no different from all of the other men who had ever lost someone else in the same way. Sometimes, the thought of that is just enough for Chris to get by.

Othertimes, he is sad. 

After Zach dumped him, Chris had come to be the new face of failure: the poster child of fucking things up. And even though his relationship with Zach had been a lot of things, Chris knew that he had never been a very good boyfriend. Chris had handled their relationship with the grace of a teenager fumbling their way through their first romantic encounter.

And Zach - Zach had done something new, something magical. He had loved Chris. It had been a genuine, palpable love in the way that Zach would look at him sometimes, these strange little sideways glances. They had changed Chris forever, because as it turned out, Chris’ heart had started beating in a new rhythm the first second that Zach had ever looked at him in that way. 

Inevitably, it had also changed again when Zach walked away for the last time.

But it was that rhythm - that off beat, forever waiting for Zach to come back rhythm in his heart - that made watching Zach get married to someone else hurt so much. For some stupid reason, Chris always thought that they would get another try. He had been pompous and arrogant, and he’d assumed that Zach would come crawling back.

Chris had always thought he was irreplaceable, just like Zach had been to him. He hadn’t even dated, not really, since Zach left. And you know, he just thought that - if Zach felt even half of the same way that Chris still felt about him - he had to come back, someday. Zach was supposed to be that person, that other half who rebuilt the bridges Chris burnt down, and drew the lines back in the sand after Chris kicked them out.

It was a two man job, Chris couldn’t do that shit alone. And for some stupid reason, his heart had always thought that Zach would come back for him.

~

Morning breaks over Chris’ head like a shattering window pane as he jerks awake to the terrifying noise of his alarm.

“Christ almighty,” He grumbles to nobody in particular, as he picks his head up off of the hotel pillow. The bed as an entity is hugely fluffy and covered in crisp white linens - the pillows in particular give Chris flashbacks to every film junket he’s participated in since graduating from Independent film.

Alarm still blaring, Chris cracks one eye opened and glares across the expanse of the mattress before reaching one hand out, his fingertips trailing along the sheets. It only takes a moment to slide the alarm off - something that Chris does regularly in his sleep, unfortunately - and then he makes a face, dropping his head back down into the pillow as his hand relaxes around the body of his phone.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t actually feel all that hungover. He can remember everything that happened last night, from the moment he and Joe pulled up in a cab to his own independent departure. For one stomach turning moment, Chris wishes that he had blacked out, because as all of the memories come flooding back to him he feels embarrassment begin to creep in beneath his fingernails.

He had made a toast, which had been this side of colorful. Everyone had felt bad for him, with the exception of Miles’ half of the room - they had all stared at him as though he was something that needed to be destroyed, quickly. 

Cringing, Chris picks his phone back up off of the mattress, and looks at it with only one eye, half opened. Maybe if he only looks at his text messages through his eyelashes, he won’t feel so embarrassed for himself when he sees the messages that are likely waiting for him.

Chris braces himself as he opens his text app to assess the damage he has caused.

It’s um, strange. Immediately not right. Both of his eyes pop open, and he frowns, pushing himself up onto one elbow. The only new messages he has are from Joe and his mom, but he could have sworn he’d seen and replied to both of these yesterday. He taps Joe’s conversation open and rolls over onto his back, re-reading the last few messages they’d exchanged.

The last message in his thread with Joe is a reminder to be ready by nine a.m.

Chris checks his network signal, which looks normal, and then holds his phone up. He points it at the ceiling as he swings the device around, trying to hit some kind of electronic network type wave. He doesn’t understand technology at all, but maybe this will help.

When he brings his phone back down, he isn’t surprised to see that his messages remain unchanged. It’s just - he knows he replied to this last text of Joe’s yesterday. It had been the last message they’d exchanged, because Joe had arrived in the cab not too soon after.

 _Get an iPhone, Chris, they’re better than Blackberry Chris,_ he thinks to himself, grumbling under his breath as he uses both hands to hold the restart button combination down. He yawns and starts kicking his way out of his blankets, thoughts drifting to the idea of getting some kind of hair of the dog and heavy food - room service?

His phone cycles and restarts as Chris is lurching into an upright position. Strangely enough the room doesn’t spin around him, and he doesn’t taste the curl of last night’s scotch in the back of his throat. Instead, he startles when his phone lights up and begins blaring in his hand, fresh from its technological exorcism.

A closeup of Joe’s humongous face pops onto the screen. It’s a purposely badly angled photo that Chris took in the dark of a European bar during the first press tour, god it felt like lifetimes ago now. Thanks to the cloud - whoever that is - this photo has followed him through three different phones, which is incredible as Chris does consider the photo a national treasure. Joe looks completely psychotic in it, with his face lit up in a ghoulish way from the candle that Zach had been holding underneath his chin.

It had been a real team effort. Now, Chris feels his stomach lurch and dip as the ringing doesn’t stop. Here comes the shit.

“What’s up?” He answers, going for casual ignorance as he tries to sound like he isn’t the guy who totally fucked up and made a complete ass of himself at the reception.

Joe sounds a little out of breath and harried as he asks, “Are you ready? I got a taxi already, I’m waiting outside.”

“For breakfast?” Chris asks, genuinely feeling dumb. At least an invitation to food means that Joe hasn’t totally cast him out.

There’s a pause as Joe clearly tries to figure out what to say next. After a beat of silence he finally answers, “For our suit fittings… dude, you said you wanted your seams adjusted. Are you fucking drunk already?”

“No! Wait, what?” Chris asks, as alarm bells that sound suspiciously like his iPhone start going off in his head. He gets out of bed hurriedly, tripping over himself and the sheet still half wrapped around him as he makes his way over to the window. With one hand he pushes through the curtains and slides the window up so he can look outside. And, sure enough, there’s a cab idling at the curb, Joe’s trademark Quinto spider leg sticking out of it and everything. “I’m not drunk.”

Joe sighs - ugh, the tribulations of being one of the best men - and says, “Just hurry it up, man, the meter’s running.”

“The meter,” Chris repeats, as Joe hangs up on him. He drops the phone from his ear and turns to stare across the room, where his luggage is still sitting unpacked up against the far wall. “Right.”

~

He makes it down to the cab within five minutes - two of which are spent waiting for the elevators.

The warm swell of late summer heat hits Chris in the face the second he hurries out of the hotel’s front revolving doors. He knows this is not the most put together he’s ever looked, but he’s got his travel bag in one hand and his shirt is mostly buttoned up, so for this morning he’s calling it a win.

Joe is eating a breakfast wrap when Chris bends down into the already opened door. As always he is Zach’s complete antithesis, looking pretty half assed and disorganized as he sits there with egg and flour all over his top lip. His knapsack is bunched up on the seat next to him, unzipped and spilling various Joe-related paraphernalia everywhere.

“Hey. You talk to Zach yet?” Joe asks, as Chris gets in and get the door closed. Joe mostly stares down into his wrap, searching for his next bite as they pull away from the curb, and navigate out into the early morning New York traffic.

Man if Chris ever got married, he’d do it in fall, or winter. Summer in New York is gross.

Without meaning to, Chris holds onto the door handle and blanks out as he feels an overwhelming sense of deja vu drip over him. It’s like ice water, and it drips down the back of his neck. He peels the lid off of the watery coffee he’d poured at the concierge's desk and shakes his head, feeling memory sick.

“Not yet, man,” He replies, and when the words tumble out of his mouth, it doesn’t feel like he’s lying.

~

The entire day goes by like the flash bang of an apathetic bomb.

First it’s the suit fittings, which is fine. Chris spends the same amount of time getting the same adjustments that he asked for yesterday. After the suit fittings he and Joe grab more coffee before heading out to the vineyard. Joe says that the planner is already out there setting everything up, and mentions that Zach has also recently arrived.

When Chris and Joe roll up, he and Zach exchange a stilted hug and a warm smile as caterers and assistants holding lilac flower arrangements rush around them. For them, it’s just another day in the life. People begin to arrive later that afternoon, so Chris makes the rounds, trying to meet the people he hadn’t had a chance to the night before.

Later, when he bumps into Miles in the hallway outside the bathrooms, they exchange handshakes and Chris tries to stop himself from feeling sick.

It’s like trying to catch up on a videogame that you’ve already played through, but forgotten to save. Chris anticipates the things that happen next, and has a vague sense of discomfort that he can’t quite shake as he walks the path to the things that come next. Ultimately, the things that he knows will hurt.

He watches Zach walk down the aisle for the second time, and it aches no less than the first. The whole day feels like a bad dream, a total nightmare, and Chris can’t do anything to shake himself out of it.

 _Just wake up,_ he thinks, as Zach and Miles kiss.

~

“So, I’d like to make a toast using a quote from one of my favorite sets of twins in the United States of America,” Joe is saying to the crowd. The gimmick is ultimately familiar as Chris watches him raise his wine glass over the table and look up, into the bright bucket lights that are shining down on their table. “As the Olsen twins said in It Takes Two, _‘Love is that can't-eat, can't-sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over-the-fence, World Series kinda stuff.’_ I love you guys, congratulations, and cheers!”

Chris raises his own glass as everyone around them laughs and echoes Joe’s ‘cheers.’

“Anyway, nobody wants to hear me talk anymore. Everyone say, _shut up, Joe_ ,” Joe cracks, waiting for everyone to laugh and then parrot back the words ‘shut up, Joe.’ Joe cracks himself up, accidentally bumps the microphone and makes it squeal over the sound system as he turns back around to face Chris. “Ah, well. Like the meat on a turkey, Chris and I are pretty much killing it here, as best man and other-other best man. I think he’s probably the white meat, though. Anyways, let’s get a speech from my space astronaut!”

Chris’ heart drops down into his stomach as a round of applause swells from those arranged around the circular dinner tables in front of him. They’re all familiar faces, Chris thinks, as he glances from side to side before leaning forward to set his scotch glass down with one hand and accept the microphone that Joe sticks in his face with the other.

“Thank you for referencing that beautiful moment in nineties pop culture, Joseph,” Chris intones, pressing his mouth too close to the microphone. He turns to glance over at Joe from the corner of his eye, and can’t help but laugh when Joe grins wide and leans back in his chair, offering his wine glass up in another toast. Chris wipes the corner of one eye as he turns back to the crowd and continues, “As I’m sure most of you are aware, I really am terrible with speeches.”

A few people laugh - clearly they have heard Chris speak in public before - so Chris offers up a half smile, and tries to keep his hands from shaking as he clears his throat.

He doesn’t want to do this again. Even if the whole day has just been one gigantic rolling nightmare, he still isn’t ready to relive this moment. He isn’t prepared to feel the same way he did when he first saw Zach slipping away from him. He isn’t strong enough to do this twice.

“I just wanted to say - ah, man, you know, I wish I could quote Passport to Paris by heart and maybe compete with Joe,” He starts off, his throat tight, pinched. A few people laugh, but all that Chris can hear is an echo from somewhere in the back of his mind. It sounds a lot like _your space captain is truly terrible at public speaking… the empire state… that was kind of my jam, you know… I remember the first night Zach introduced me to Miles… I’m just glad that New York finally gave him what he wanted… congratulations to the happy couple…_

Now that he isn’t wasted on scotch, he realizes that he never expected this to hurt so bad.

Blinking those memories away, Chris tries to shake himself out of it. But that bottomless feeling in the pit of his stomach just doesn’t go away - it just drops deeper when he looks across the room, over at Zach and where he’s sitting with Miles. Their hands are intertwined over the tabletop, and Zach’s thumb is running back and forth over the bumps of Miles’ knuckles, wide, satisfied smiles on both of their faces.

“But unfortunately my love for the Olsens does not run as deeply as Joe’s does, so I can’t do that,” Chris shrugs, pausing to laugh off the second wave of anxiety that blooms in his stomach as he looks away from Zach, and back towards their friends and Zach’s family. Chris licks his lips, shrugs his shoulders, and then sighs, “So I just - you know. All my best, Zach, Miles, and… that’s it. That’s all.”

And for one second - for one split second - Chris swears that he sees Zach falter. But then Chris blinks, and by the time he opens his eyes again it’s gone. Zach is just Zach, this version of him that Miles knows better than Chris ever did, and he’s just sitting there, offering up a wide, almost vacant smile.

Chris pulses an awkward smile back and hands the microphone off. He can’t help but offer Joe a wary glance as he sits back down in his seat, smoothing his tie flat against his chest.

~

“How about we get some shots - hey man, two tequila,” Cho calls to the bartender, half over the bar top as Chris leans against the front of it; gaze fixed to the wooden floor, tongue nervously sliding back and forth over the curve of his bottom lip. He’s had a few drinks since dinner and their speeches - yeah, people have been pity boozing him up all night - so he figures, whatever, having a round of tequila with Cho is one step in the right direction.

Chris frowns, and snaps back into reality as he turns to ask Jon, “Can I ask you something that might sound strange?”

“Let’s get weird, man,” Cho shrugs, as he turns around to face Chris. He’s a little buzzed too, Chris is actually pretty sure he and his wife rolled up drunk, which in itself was pretty Cho-sian, but it had made Chris jealous, the way that they had held hands and smiled at one another, clearly smitten. “Lay it on me, captain.”

The bartender sets the two shots of tequila down in front of them, and then drops a slice of lime across each glass.

“Cheers, man,” Chris nods, reaching for his shot. They both down the tequila without any salt, and then they suck on their limes, cringing and biting into the citrus as they gasp and slide their shot glasses back towards the bartender. As Chris feels the liquor beginning to heat his body up, he turns to Cho and asks, “Have you ever had deja vu?”

Cho shrugs and goes back to sipping his beer. He replies, “Sure, everyone has. It’s like a glitch in the matrix.”

“Yeah. It’s weird, right?” Chris asks, making a face into his own glass of scotch. He glances over at Cho and adds, “I’ve been having it all day. Pretty much since I woke up at the hotel this morning, man. It’s starting to get to me.”

Laughing, Cho shrugs one shoulder and asks, “Better than impending doom, though, right?”

“Not really. I mean, I’ve had that too,” Chris laughs, taking another sip of his scotch. As it goes down he knots his eyebrows together and leans harder on the bar, elbows resting there as he looks back over at Cho. “You know when you’re dreaming, and you know that you’re dreaming? That’s what it feels like. But it never ends.”

Cho cringes and then makes a sudden face, pressing at his chest as the tequila continues to work its way down. After a pause he says, “Ugh. Calling it right now, midnight heartburn. I know what you mean, though. I used to have the same reoccurring nightmare in university. Asian parents, man.”

“Yeah, right?” Chris replies, like he has any idea of what Cho is talking about. He taps his fingers a few times against the bar top and then turns, the tequila shot clearly beginning to fire the wrong signals at his brain as he adds, “It’s bizarre. I am… you know, completely eviscerated by all of this - by Zach - but, the other half of me… doesn’t care, I guess, because it doesn’t feel real. It’s like the story that’s happening to someone else.”

Gesturing at the bartender for another beer, Cho pats Chris on the shoulder and says, “Look at it this way. The brain has a weird way of dealing with trauma. Maybe you’re stuck in a coma somewhere!”

“Thanks,” Chris laughs, before he catches himself and shakes his head, looking back down at his drink miserably. “I just want it to stop. I want to wake up, and have this whole thing just be one big bullshit nightmare.”

Cho offers him a half smile and says, “I get it, man. I can only empathize with the way you feel, but I’m sure it sucks.”

“Thanks. It’s just fucking me up, I think I had a nightmare about the wedding last night. I gave this really horrible speech, like I was just blackout drunk, and I was talking about how Miles was a model, and how happy Zach was in New York,” Chris recounts, screwing up his face as he recalls the memory that seems islands away. “Zoe comforted me afterwards. I think. Well, kind of. She just told me to man up and leave Zach alone.”

Laughing, Cho shrugs and nods at the bartender as he’s handed a fresh beer.

“Sounds like Zoe. I’m no expert, but that sounds like a pretty elaborate dream,” Chris says, almost sounding impressed as they both turn back to face the dance floor, where Zach has been trading off partners all night. He’s currently dancing with Kristen, laughing as he spins her around the floor to a Detroit Cobras track. “I don’t remember most of the shit that I dream, and when I do, it’s all backwards. Like the other night, I thought I was a member of the Mythbusters, but not the asian guy. I was the lady.”

That makes Chris crack up, heartache subsiding as he cackles some more and looks over at Cho with an amused look on his face.

“Pretty sure that is some pavlovian shit, man,” Chris grins, laughter ebbing away as the song ends. Chris watches as Kristen reaches up to kiss Zach on the cheek before they wander off, hand in hand, to where Miles and Dax are sitting at one of the tables. Chris frowns as Zach kisses Miles, and adds, “I should smoke more weed.”

Cho gives him a knowing grin, and reaches over to clink his beer against the rim of Chris’ glass.

~

When Chris gets back to the hotel that night he lays in bed for a long time, one arm behind his head as he flips through the photos that he still has saved on his phone roll.

He’s never been the best with technology, but that isn’t the reason why these three year old photos are still on his phone. He’s almost sure that all of his pictures are automatically backed up to the cloud - for better or for worse - but even still, he’s just never had the heart to delete these particular shots.

They’re all of Zach, which shouldn’t surprise anybody, all of moments that bring up really vivid memories of when Chris was happy, which probably would surprise everybody. A photo of Zach at lunch, sunglasses on and grinning widely at Chris from the other side of the patio table; the next of Zach’s head, hair messy and stuck up at the ends as he’d laid in Chris’ lap watching TV at his old place in Silverlake; Zach making a stupid ‘ch’ face wearing his stupid hat, a few steps away from his car with a coffee in one hand, and keys in the other.

These photos are proof that they had been happy together. Little moments in everyday life that hadn’t meant anything then, but meant everything to Chris now.

When he falls asleep an hour later, he purposely doesn’t set an alarm to wake him up in the morning.

~

The next morning, Chris wakes up to the blare of his alarm clock.

“Oh my god,” He grumbles into his pillow, one hand flapping out of his bed clothes as he reaches for his cellphone, within arms reach and precariously balanced against the edge of the mattress. Full of sleep and rage, Chris hits the top button until the phone stops making noises, and then sighs, trying to relax back into his pillow.

A few minutes later, his phone starts ringing instead.

“What,” Chris greets, eyes still closed as he speaks mostly into the damp fabric of his pillow.

There’s a pause, before Joe laughs and replies, “Well good morning, sunshine. I’m outside in a taxi, so why are you still asleep?”

“Why are you in a taxi?” Chris asks, wrinkling his forehead. This - this isn’t right…

Joe is eating something, but he manages to say, mouth clearly full, “What are you, drunk already? Suit fittings, man. Get your ass down here, the meter’s running.”

“What, Joe, wait - “ Chris tries to say, but all of a sudden Joe is hanging up and Chris is left by himself in bed, staring at the ceiling with a sick, sour feeling in his stomach.

~

Chris is decidedly jumpy at the suit fitting.

“You gotta hold still, hon, I’m gonna stick you accidentally,” The woman is telling him, trying to hold his leg still as he stares at himself in the floor length mirrors that surround him. His reflection stares back at him like a deer in the headlights, and, behind him, Joe sits on an overly upholstered chair as he drinks his coffee with one hand and checks his phone with the other.

Licking his lips, Chris shakes his head, and tries to stop his leg from bouncing. He manages a, “Sorry.”

“That’s all right, it’s not my skin,” She replies, not unkindly, as she begins to move around the platform he’s standing on. His heart is thundering at about a million miles an hour, which is not a great feeling. Feeling his heart beat so freely beneath his skin makes his hands feel jittery and nervous, and he finds himself licking at his lips again to compensate. He stares at himself in the mirror critically.

He’s real. He’s standing right here, looking back at himself. He’s real.

“Not to make this weird or anything, but I think Zach is worried about you,” Joe says offhandedly, looking up, and catching Chris staring at himself in the mirror. He raises one dark eyebrow and makes a weird face before he takes another sip of his coffee, and flips his phone around so Chris can see the glare of his screen through the mirror. Chris has no idea what it says, all that he can really tell is that it’s a text message screen. The blue and gray clouds kind of give it away. Joe says, “He texted me again to make sure you’re still coming.”

Chris clenches his jaw, trying to tamp the anxiety down, and then shrugs. He tries to feign innocence as he says, “Well, of course I’m coming. He asked me to be there, so I’ll be there. Does this feel weird to you?”

“What, that my little brother is getting married before me? Not really,” Joe shrugs, going back to his phone. His legs are crossed and he bounces one foot in the air to the beat of the Muzak that’s been blaring ever since they got here a half an hour ago. “Although, I gotta say - and don’t tell Zach that I ever told you this - I never banked on Miles.”

Throat suddenly dry, Chris tries to swallow. This is wrong, he realizes, suddenly. Something is wrong here - this isn’t deja vu, this isn’t just having a strange feeling, and this isn’t a glitch in the matrix.

“The dark horse,” Joe is continuing, totally oblivious to Chris’ impending panic attack. He glances up when Chris doesn’t respond, and unfolds his legs, both feet bouncing down against the floor. Then he catches Chris’ gaze in the mirror, and asks, looking earnest, “Without getting too weird, you are going to be okay, right? You’re not going to like… open fire, or cut Zach’s dick off or anything, are you?”

Chris shakes his head, numb, and manages to answer, voice neutral, “No, I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

~

Everything is not fine.

It is decidedly not fine, Chris thinks, a little hysterically, as he steps between one of the caterers, and someone else who is carrying a wooden crate full of wine glasses.

Chris is either having a midlife crisis, or he is trapped in a coma in some alternate universe. Maybe Cho had been right, this was the universe’s way of getting back at him, and somewhere, in some land far away, he was laying in a bleached blue-green gown, hospital blanket pulled up to his bloody chin as Zach held his hand, crying gently at his coma-ed boyfriend. Like a Morrissey song.

Nervous, Chris pours himself a drink behind the empty bar, and throws half of it back in one go.

Maybe this is a death spiral. Maybe he isn’t in a coma at all, maybe he’s dying on the side of the road somewhere, and this is his comeuppance for being kind of a dick when he was fumbling through his twenties. Fuck, maybe he’s dead already, and this is hell, this universe where Zach gets married everyday, to somebody who isn’t him.

Not thinking, Chris throws back another mouthful of booze.

“Hey, you’re here,” Someone says from behind him. For some reason Chris doesn’t realize it’s Zach until he turns around.

If Chris’ world had been spinning before, in that moment, where Zach takes a step towards him, the entire universe comes screeching to a halt. For a moment gravity doesn’t exist, and Chris watches, horrified, as everything around them comes crashing down to the ground. Objects break and bounce as finally, finally, his body gets what it wants, and Zach comes to stand in front of him.

“Congratulations,” Chris blurts, feeling stupid as he stands there, holding an almost empty booze glass.

Zach smiles and looks warmed, happy, for a moment, before he kind of shrugs it away and runs a hand through his hair instead, not yet styled but recently washed - Chris remembers what that felt like.

“It’s weird, right?” Zach asks, wrinkling his nose up a bit as his mouth turns into a half smile before he rolls his lips between his teeth, trying to temper his excitement. When Chris shrugs and offers a ‘yeah’ noise, Zach nods, and then raises his eyebrows, gaze flickering over Chris’ face as he adds, “I’m really happy you came, Chris. It means a lot to me that you’re here.”

Forcing a smile, Chris thinks ‘fuck it’, and throws the rest of his drink back before replying, “Wouldn’t miss it, man.”

“Well, I just - I miss you, Pine, we should hang out more,” Zach says, glancing down at Chris’ empty drink glass before he looks back at Chris’ face. Chris feels the booze beginning to course through his system, warming him up and simultaneously cooling his frazzled nerves down as Zach adds, “I’ll be back in California soon. Let’s get dinner or something.”

Nodding, Chris swallows, gulping against the taste of liquor, and says, “Sure thing.”

The strangest part about it all is that, for one moment, it doesn’t hurt.

~

That night, he’s the last person to leave the reception hall.

He’s feeling a little bit maudlin, a little bit down, so he snags a bottle of wine from the empty kitchen, and sits at one of the abandoned tables in the middle of the reception floor. Everything is still done up - the cleaning crew won’t come through here until morning, when Chris is passed out in bed, potentially still holding a wine bottle in one hand. He doesn’t mind the moment of silence that he gets, though, his feet planted firmly on the ground as his eyes coast around the room, at the table pieces and the name cards and the lights hanging from the ceiling.

Maybe following the scotch with wine wasn’t the greatest idea, Chris thinks, grimacing as his stomach rolls. He rests one hand across his stomach and tips the bottle back with the other, swallowing against the acidic, fruity taste on his lips. He has an endgame, right now, and the endgame is to not hurt so bad.

Chris Pine, thirty four years old and completely dead in the water, he muses to himself, setting the bottle back down against the table. He snorts a little under his breath when he reads the label, which is customized with Zach and Miles’ names, as well as today’s date. Cute touch, he muses, scratching at the label with his thumbnail. 

It’s a strange thing, to relive a nightmare.

The day had started so laden with anxiety, Chris had barely made it through the suit fitting with the skin of his upper thighs still intact. The feeling had not faded throughout the day, but it had changed, it had morphed into something else, something itchy, ill-fitting. Chris had been trying to put his finger on it all day, but he’d always been one step behind, almost like he was on the wrong side of the mirror.

When Zach had exchanged vows with Miles, it hadn’t seemed real at all - like seeing your favorite band in concert for the first time, it had been a rush of emotion that ended quickly, leaving Chris feeling like it was just the story that happened to somebody else. The ring on Zach’s hand and the reception that followed were just the death echoes of their relationship; it had all ended quietly, silently, the moment Zach slipped the gold band onto Miles’ hand in return.

Now, sitting alone in the dark, Chris frowns, feeling his throat constrict, the crushing feeling of tears beginning to well up behind his eyes. He stares at the wine bottle label until it doesn’t make sense anymore and then he lets himself break, the feeling clutching at his chest, his throat, until he feels like he’s swimming, absolutely drowning in the feeling of it all.

~

His alarm clock wakes him up the next morning.

Chris opens one eye, suddenly awake, aware of the feeling of the hairs on his arms standing on end as he eyes the screen of his phone, lit up across the bed. Shifting, Chris reaches for the phone, and turns his alarm off.

Next, he calls Joe, who is sitting comfortably in his five last called contacts.

“Hey, I was just gonna call ya,” Joe answers, voice a little louder than usual as he talks over the sound of a cafe or coffee shop behind him. “I’m just getting breakfast next door, then I’ll snag a cab. Meet me down here in fifteen?”

For one long, silent moment, all that Chris hears is the thump, thump, thump of his own steady heartbeat.

“Sure,” Chris answers, his voice calm, controlled. His arms break out in goosebumps. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

~

Chris declines sharing the last half of Joe’s breakfast burrito, and follows him into the tailor who is a ten minute cab ride away.

She makes the adjustments to the hips of his suit pants - too tight, he likes a nice fit but the things that these pants are doing to his ass is really not appropriate for daytime wear, much less a wedding - and then he and Joe trade places. He watches as she hems the cuffs of Joe’s pants, and then brings in the sides a little. Legs like tree trunks, she says, jabbing Joe in the knee and watching his face in the mirror.

A strange sense of calm fills Chris as he sits in that red, crushed velvet chair. He blinks; he opens his eyes. He’s still here, today, the morning of Zach’s wedding, and he’s still running errands with Joe, who is now arguing with the tailor about how often he flexes his glutes.

Today will be the third time that Chris watches Zach get married. Today will be the third time that Zach marries Miles.

The first time this happened, it wasn’t a nightmare, he thinks to himself, feeling oddly zen and composed. The first time was the first time, and yesterday was the second time, and today, today is the third time. That means that tomorrow will likely be the fourth time, and then the fifth and the sixth, and suddenly, Chris will have spent an entire week watching Zach marry the wrong person.

Maybe Cho had been right - maybe this is what it felt like to be dead, or dying. It was learning to speak the language of loss forever, in a way that Chris knew he would never, ever be able to get over. There was no recouping from an eternity spent losing Zach.

“Chris would you please back me up here,” Joe pleads, snapping Chris out of his daydream. He’s staring at Chris in the mirror, eyes bright and lit up and severe looking in the strange overhead glow. “If I bend over, I’m busting out of these pants, right?”

She smacks him in the middle of his lower back, and instructs, “No bendover. Why you need to bend over?”

“Who knows!” Joe exclaims, frazzled, and Chris relaxes, the attention sliding back off of him as Joe begins to tick off a list of reasons why he may bend over or kneel down later in the day.

~

By the time they get to the vineyard that afternoon, most of the decorations are up, and catering is already out in full force.

“The photographer is running late,” Zach’s party planner tells them, looking frazzled with a clipboard in the crook of one arm and a stack of decorative plates under the other as she greets them in the entryway. “But you two should get your suits on anyways, because I’ll whip out my iPhone if I have to.”

Joe starts to laugh, but then she makes a face that says ‘that wasn’t actually a joke,’ so he sobers and nods instead, patting her on the round of the shoulder as he and Chris step further into the front entrance of the building. It’s a frenzy of activity, everyone dressed down in either white - the staff - or black - the servers, and for a second Chris is so disoriented it feels like the entire room spins beneath him.

“I feel like I just walked into the hive,” Chris says, watching as two people walk past him, each carrying a massive looking keg of craft beer on their shoulders. “Holy shit.”

Nodding, Joe frowns and then sneaks forward, snagging two lukewarm looking cans of cider off of a table top piled with other libations and what look like dessert trays. Catching Chris’ eye, he nods over his shoulder, up towards the staircase that winds around the curve of the entryway hall.

“We’re a package deal tonight, man. Let’s depart,” Joe says after a second, starting towards the bottom stair. Chris nods and heads after Joe, ducking through another line of people carrying floral arrangements. In Chris’ peripheral vision, he sees the wedding planner run out of the room with one hand raised up high over her head. Halfway up the stairs, Joe says over his shoulder, “These people are insane. This is like some wall street shit, or something.”

They hit the top landing and Chris nods, frowning a little as he replies, “No kidding. Do you have any idea where we’re going?”

“Nope,” Joe pauses to hand Chris one of the ciders, and then stop fully to crack his own open. “I’m pretty sure Zach is in one of these rooms, though. I figured we should check on him to make sure he hasn’t gone all Julia Roberts on us.”

Chris laughs, trying to crack his cider open one handed. It’s awkward, but he manages, and then asks, “Pretty Woman or Runaway Bride?”

“I don’t think you necessarily need to choose,” Joe grins, knocking on the first door before he cracks it open. It’s just an empty bedroom, questionably decorated, so Joe leaves the door open before continuing onto the next. There’s a bathroom, a linen closet, another bedroom, and then, finally, Zach. When Joe knocks on the last door, Chris hears the faraway sound of Zach answering ‘yeah’ before Joe cracks the door open and lets it swing wide. “Your best men have arrived.”

All of a sudden Chris’ insides begin to feel like they’re outside. Zach is sitting on the bed, bent over at the waist as he carefully laces up his shoes. He’s got his suit pants on, but his shirt is still unbuttoned, hair still wet and freshly showered. Chris hasn’t seen him like this in a long time; they’ve been careful not to see one another like this in a long time.

“Ah, and I was getting so worried,” Zach intones, grinning up at them from beneath his hair and eyebrows as he adjusts the way the lace is sitting against his shoe and then straightens up. “Did you guys see Cheryl downstairs? Is she still totally freaking out?”

Joe shrugs and sips at his cider can loudly, before answering, “She’s alternating between cracking the whip at those who surround her and looking like she’s about to burst into tears at any moment.”

“Perfect,” Zach laughs, running a hand through his hair. He looks up, biting his bottom lip, and catches eyes with Chris accidentally. They both look at one another for a moment too long before snapping away - Zach’s gaze going to Joe’s, and Chris’ to the top of his can as he tips it back to take a long swig of the alcohol. “Is mom here yet?”

Shaking his head, Joe starts wandering over to one of the massive floor to ceiling length windows. No guests have arrived yet, but outside is still a hub of activity as various things are dropped off - the catering, the cake, the extra chairs, the DJ equipment, the photo booth.

“Not yet, she and Auntie Margie are going to get their hair done first,” Joe says, turning around to lean against the ledge of the window. He raises his eyebrows at Zach to punctuate his sentence.

Zach nods and shrugs, making a ‘that sounds about right’ face as he settles back into the bed.

“I like the shoes, man,” Zach says after a moment, and it takes Chris a second to realize that Zach is referring to the sneakers that he’s currently wearing.

Moving his feet out of habit, Chris looks back up, over at Zach, and replies, “Thanks. I couldn’t figure out if slip ons were wedding appropriate - they’re okay though, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Zach replies, nodding his head again as they both watch Chris’ feet.

When Chris looks up and over at Joe out of necessity, Joe is looking back at them both with a strange look on his face.

“You’re lucky I didn’t wear flip flops,” He finally says after a second, as Chris takes another swig of his drink and Zach smiles, still sitting on the bed as he scratches at the back of his neck. This has been such a production, learning how to be friends again, and the heavy blanket hanging over the room is the perfect evidence of that. “Hey is there a bathroom in here?”

Zach shakes his head and nods out the door, which is still hanging halfway open. “No, but there’s one right across the hall. Please don’t do anything gross in there.”

“Here’s my drink,” Joe says, ignoring Zach in favor of handing him his cider can. “I stole it out of a box of similar looking drinks, but please enjoy it in my absence.”

Laughing, Zach snorts and makes a face but accepts the can anyways as Joe steps around Chris and walks out of the room. They both fall quiet, Zach sipping at Joe’s drink as they listen to Joe in the hallway, until he locates the bathroom door and there’s a creak of the door opening and then closing and locking behind him.

“So what time did you get in last night?” Zach asks, leaning over to set the drink down on the bedside table so he can begin buttoning up his shirt, starting at the throat and working his way down.

Chris licks his lips out of habit and then answers, “Around midnight. I think I was asleep about a minute after I checked into the hotel. I ordered room service for dinner and found it outside my door when I left this morning.”

“Yeah, it’s exhausting huh?” Zach asks, laughing a little as his fingers work over the buttons. “I miss LA, but I definitely don’t miss the jet lag.”

“Yeah, well,” Chris shrugs, looking down at the top of his can. “That’s life, right?”

Zach pauses, glancing up, looking at Chris’ face in confusion. He raises his eyebrows and starts to say, “I didn’t mean…”

“No, sorry,” Chris sighs, rubbing one hand over his face. He frowns at himself, and looks over to where Zach is sitting. He studies Zach’s face for a moment, weighing his words, letting his tongue roll over his bottom lip. Zach reaches for his drink again. “That wasn’t - I don’t want to make this a thing, sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“That’s okay,” Zach says, voice softening, going rough and quiet. He lets the can hang between his knees, holding it with both hands as his gaze falls back to the rug between them. It’s lilac and light green and very east coast vineyard. After a moment of silence, Zach grimaces and looks over at Chris, adding, “I know this is hard.”

He doesn’t mean to be, but Chris is suddenly so angry his head spins. Fuck that. Zach doesn’t know how hard this is - he has no idea what it feels like to watch the only person you’ve ever really cared about walk down the aisle to someone half your age, with three times as much hair. Zach has no fucking idea what all of this feels like.

“Don’t - “ Chris stumbles over his words, and sharply looks over at Zach. “You don’t know. I appreciate the sentiment but you have no - _no_ \- idea what this feels like for me.”

Zach’s shoulders hunch, and he takes a long drag from his cider as they both listen to Joe flush the toilet. The house is old and the walls are paper thin; Chris has never been more grateful for opting for the hotel room until right now.

“Don’t make me feel like shit,” Zach finally says after a moment, which surprises Chris.

Chris frowns, and doesn’t know if he looks as surprised as he feels when he says, “I’m not trying to make you feel like shit.”

“Well, here I am, feeling sufficiently like shit,” Zach snaps, before he cuts himself off and sighs, pinching at the bridge of his nose before he rubs his fingers over his forehead. They both sit in the thick, murky silence that settles between them as Chris sips at his drink and Zach takes a few deep breaths. After a few moments, he adds, “I don’t know how many times I have to apologize to you. I couldn’t sit on that sinking ship any longer, alright?”

The cider tin makes a crinkling noise as Chris tightens his grip without thinking about it, anger and disappointment and embarrassment flooding his chest as he takes a step forward and points one finger down at Zach’s face, replying, “Your unwillingness to give me a goddamned second to breathe does not make a sinking ship. You left _me_ , and I was the one left standing there, trying to plug a crack in the wall with a fucking bandaid.”

“Your crack, your wall, your bandaid,” Zach snaps back, voice dangerously low as he gets up off of the bed, standing on both feet to look Chris in the eye. His face is tight, his eyes are bright, and his cheeks are pink. “You don’t get to do this to me. Not now, not today, not ever. You’re too late and that sucks, but that’s life and I’m sorry.”

Chris feels his throat tighten, his stomach drop, his teeth grind. He and Zach stare at one another, each of them breathing hard, and Chris has words - so many words - on the tip of his tongue, he wants to call Zach every fucking nasty thing that he can think of, he wants to spit at him, shake him until he understands. But in that moment he is so crippled by overwhelming anger and sadness all that he can do is glower at Zach’s face still only a few inches away from his.

There are footsteps outside the door, before the door swings back open a few inches and Zach backs down, taking a step away from Chris and running a hand through his hair.

Chris swallows - finally taking a breath - and drags his eyes away from where he’s affixed them to the spot Zach had been standing in. When he looks to the side he sees Joe standing in the doorway, confusion written all over his face as Zach storms over and grabs his suit jacket off of the hanger before heading towards the door.

On his way out he shoves Joe’s cider can back at him, and Joe accepts it with both fumbling hands.

“Fuck,” Chris sighs, as Joe watches Zach storm down the hall.

Joe, eyebrows raised, turns to Chris and says, “So that looks like it went well.”

“Yeah,” Chris grimaces, before throwing back the remaining dregs of his cider. Once he’s taken the last gulp he looks back over at Joe, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth before he adds, “Just awesome.”

~

That night, Chris doesn’t stick around for the ceremony or the reception.

He calls a cab just as the first guests begin to arrive, and narrowly misses running into Zoe and Zach’s mother, who arrive separately but around the same time.

Chris heads back to the hotel and spends the night in the hotel bar, spending way too much money on drinks and compulsively checking his text messages. For some stupid reason he wonders if Zach will text him - to apologize, to continue their fight, to break the ice. Chris doesn’t know what he wants or even what he’s expecting, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because it never comes.

Once Chris is good and drunk he heads back up to his room. It isn’t until he’s naked in bed that he closes one eye, staring at his phone screen with the other as the room spins around him, and uses one finger to type a text message.

 _I’m sorry for everything,_ he texts, and it’s short, and maybe a little vague, but it’s true.

Chris is sorry for it all. His apology starts with letting Zach go, and ends with leaving him with the ghosts of their relationship at the vineyard.

~

The next morning, Chris’ alarm rings right on schedule.

Groundhog day doesn’t allow for hangovers, and Chris blinks himself awake with a distinct lack of nausea at the back of his throat. The world just keeps spinning on.

He gets up, he makes his bed, and he gets dressed.

Joe will be outside with the taxi soon.

~

“That looks tasty,” Kristen says, sitting down in the chair across from him.

The DJ has been playing Earth, Wind and Fire for the last three songs and frankly Chris is over it.

“It’s steak,” He shrugs, trying to swallow the food already in his mouth as he reaches for his glass of wine. Somewhere behind him the house lights are spinning as Zach dances with Miles on the floor. The last time Chris had glanced over his shoulder, he’d been dancing around with the very lady sitting in front of him. “Steak always looks tasty.”

Kristen shrugs and smiles, and then reaches across and brushes Chris’ hair back from his forehead.

“You want to hit up the dessert table with me?” She asks, but to Chris, it really sounds like ‘are you okay?’

This is the fourth time that Chris has watched Zach get married. Right now, it seems like he’ll continue to see this happen until the day he dies. Maybe he will die in the church pews, and this nightmare will finally be over. At this point, it’s hard to tell, and at this point, he’s been avoiding Zach studiously, lest they get into another argument that ends with Chris drinking in a hotel bar for all eternity.

“I would love that,” Chris says, looking up with a big grin on his face.

To Kristen, it sounds a lot like ‘my heart hurts, but I’m trying.’

~

Five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten. Every day is exactly the same. Every day, Chris wakes up, he meets Joe for breakfast, and they head to the vineyard. In the afternoon he brushes by Zach, he might see Miles in passing, and he has a few drinks before sitting through the reception.

He makes a speech after Joe. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Most people in the crowd look at him sadly, even on the nights that he holds it together and gets his speech out without cracking. On different nights he drinks with Cho, laughs with Karl, lets Zoe touch his face. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. He almost tells Zach how he feels, he almost loses it one day, and tells Miles to fuck off. Nineteen, twenty, twenty one.

During one memorable ceremony, he objects. Nobody looks surprised, but Zach is horrified. Joe escorts him out of the room, and looks at him sadly while jostling Chris back into a cab by the arm. The next day, after waking up in the same hotel bed for one more morning, Chris doesn’t go at all. That day, he just can’t manage it.

~

Chris has unlocked god mode.

He’s drunk - fucking wasted, actually - because it’s his anniversary, it’s the fiftieth night of this shit, and if that doesn’t deserve a little party, than nothing does.

It’s time for dinner and speeches, and Chris is relaxed, grinning, both of his arms flung along the backs of the two chairs he’s sitting between - Joe on his right, and Mile’s sister on his left - as he lets his head coast from side to side, taking in the crowd in front of them.

He hasn’t talked to Zach in days. Every time Chris looks at him, he seems a little further away, a little more withdrawn, a little less real.

For the hell of it, Chris glances over at Zach now. He’s sitting beside Miles, both hands in his own lap, a tight, drawstring smile on his face as he listens to Joe talk. His eyes are wide, but his expression is tense. It makes Chris smile.

“So, I’d like to make a toast using a quote from one of my favorite sets of twins in the United States of America,” Joe intones, clearly more drunk on the inside than he looks on the outside as he raises his wine glass over the table and looks up, into the bright lights that are shining down onto him. “As the Olsen twins said in It Takes Two, _‘Love is that can't-eat, can't-sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over-the-fence, World Series kinda stuff.’_ I love you guys, congratulations, and cheers!”

Chris makes a face and then throws his wine glass into the air, echoing, “fuck yeah buddy, cheers!” as everyone else adds in their sentiments, a few of them laughing and tipping their glasses towards Chris for the second time in response to his overly enthusiastic agreement.

Licking his lips, Chris looks back down at the tabletop in front of him. He hasn’t touched the dinner they served right after Zach and Miles walked into a round of applause, and right now, it’s spinning. He’s so close to being blackout drunk he can almost taste it on the tip of his tongue.

“Anyway, nobody wants to hear me talk anymore - everyone say _shut up, Joe_ ,” Joe cracks, waiting for that lull before everyone laughs and then parrots back ‘shut up, Joe.’ Joe laughs and accidentally bumps the microphone, making it squeal over the sound system as he turns around to face Chris. “Like the meat on a turkey, Chris and I are killing it as the best man and the other-other best man. Let’s get a speech from my space astronaut.”

Chris belly laughs, setting his wine glass down a little too forcefully as he grabs the microphone off of Joe and stands up, staggering back a bit as his balance tries to catch up to the fast movement of his feet. Joe says ‘woah buddy’ quietly, so nobody else will hear, and steadies Chris with a hand on the middle of his back.

“I’m fine, I’m _fiiiine_ ,” Chris explains, flapping one hand a little as he laughs again and runs a hand through his hair, feet still shuffling back and forth since he can’t quite seem to keep his balance. “We’re good, right? We’re all still good, stop touching me, it’s fine. Actually, you know what?”

Laughing, Chris reaches forward and steadies himself against the back of his chair as he lifts one foot up, climbing onto the seat of the chair. He hears Joe shift behind him, but when Chris is drunk he’s fast and tricky, and he moves quickly, body weight shifting as he heaves himself up onto the chair. He balances there for a second before moving his foot again, and resting it against the table top.

Everyone’s plates and drinks shake and clink together as a few people in the crowd gasp, murmuring - Chris laughs, this is so funny, that anyone here thinks tonight matters - and raises the microphone back up, clearing his throat.

“Fuck, I forgot my drink,” He announces, before doubling over, looking like he’s about to fall as he reaches for the drink that he earlier set at the table top. He glances over at Joe and Zach, who are both staring up at him with wide eyes, their mouths open. Miles is just a blur over Zach’s shoulder, a flash of light and that white spot that gets stuck in your eyes after you look at the sun for too long. “I’m really bad at speeches.”

A louder murmur begins to overtake the crowd, and Chris manages to focus in on Zoe, sitting in one of the front tables with both hands pressed to her mouth. She alternates between staring at Chris with a horrified look on her face and murmuring something to the person sitting beside her. 

“So, fuck it, right? This one is for the lonely,” Chris starts, his voice loud, drunk, _confident_ as he raises his wine glass up. He shifts his feet, and as he does so, the entire table sways, the sound of more dishware clinking together. Chris laughs when he realizes the photographer is standing to the side, unsure if it would be tasteless to snap photos of such an event. Chris hoists his glass higher, and continues on, “The sad, the ones who never got it right.”

Chris looks back over at Zoe, who now looks horrified, her eyes wide as she shakes her head and finally gets up from the table, hurrying between the backs of chairs as she makes her way to the other side of the room. In that moment Chris decides that if she thinks she’s going to be able to talk him down from this ledge, she is sorely mistaken.

“This is the fiftieth time I’ve seen this shit happen,” Chris continues, slurring a little as he starts to walk down the table, trying to make sure his feet land between the plates and not on top of them. When he gets closer to Zach he looks down, and sees Zach wide eyed, staring up at him. Chris sips his wine glass, and stares down at Zach, “It never gets easier watching you go.”

Joe finally gets to his feet just as Zoe comes into his peripheral vision, her face worried but tight.

“Man, you should get down,” Joe hisses to him, trying to grab at Chris’ thighs, his legs. Zoe is on the other side of the table and she’s trying to steady him, to move wine glasses and dishes out from the way of his feet before he steps on them.

After a second Joe does manage to wrangle the microphone out of Chris’ hand, but Chris doesn’t let his wine glass go. He tips the rest back before laughing again, giving Zoe a high five when she reaches her hand up to try and help him down.

“Zach, fuck you man,” Chris finally says, loudly since he has no microphone, kicking Zach’s wine glass over before he finally turns his back and jumps down from the table, smacking away Joe and Zoe’s hands as he goes. When he turns back to face Zach, Zach looks composed but strained, his eyes steady and still watching Chris. His mouth is drawn and tight, and what Chris wouldn’t give to know Zach still cared, to watch Zach snap and lose it on him one more time. “Congratulations to the happy couple.”

As Chris turns to walk out of the room, he hears Joe’s awkward laughter come over the sound system.

“Alright, well, you know - let’s - let’s just keep it going,” He’s saying, trying to recover.

Chris smacks a streamer out of his way when he feels it graze the top of his head and tries to keep himself together, at least until he can get to a cab.

~

By the time that Chris gets back to the hotel, he is fully black out drunk.

The front desk attendant has to call one of the bag boys to help him to his room. They help him with his keycard, they get his door unlocked and unceremoniously help him collapse into the foot of his bed before they leave him alone, the door clicking quietly closed.

And the thing of it all? If Chris had just had one less glass of one, one fewer scotch, he might have seen the text that Zach sent him earlier in the night - back when Chris had simply been ignoring him.

 _I think I’m making a big mistake,_ is all that Zach’s message had said.

But Chris hadn’t seen it. His phone had sat untouched in his pocket.

And the next morning when Chris wakes up, it’s to the familiar sound of his alarm clock going off.

~

“I’m still in love with Zach,” Chris says, one hand on the tailor’s front door as he holds it open for Joe to step through. As Joe steps over the threshold he falters, stops to look back over his shoulder with his mouth gaping open. Chris smiles widely and nods, before raising his eyebrows and letting go of the door. “I would do anything to stop him from marrying Miles today. It doesn’t matter, though, because when I fall asleep tonight everything will reset, and tomorrow, I’m going to wake up and do all of this over again.”

By now Joe has gone completely stand still, frozen directly in front of the door as Chris pats his chest and steps past.

“Excuse me? Did I just have a stroke or something? What did you say?” Joe asks as he hurriedly follows after Chris, his expression shocked yet intrigued.

Chris licks his lips and sticks one hand out for a taxi before he glances back over at Joe and nods.

“It’s crazy, I know,” He says. He doesn’t sound crazy, Joe thinks, scandalized. “Three weeks ago I objected during the ceremony. It wasn’t like it is in the movies, though. Nobody applauded, then you escorted me outside and they still got married. Shitty day, man. Last night I got drunk and kicked Zach’s wine glass over. I wish you could remember that, it was awesome.”

A taxi pulls up to the curb and all that Joe can do is boggle at him until Chris pulls the door open and gestures Joe inside.

~

Zach is sitting on the front steps of the venue when Chris and Joe’s taxi pulls up.

Chris can see him perfectly from his seat in the cab, through the dirt dusted windows that they had to close the second they got off the paved road. Zach is watching people come and go, dressed in plain black jeans and a t-shirt, he has a tumbler of booze in one hand as he stretches out across the wooden steps. He’s dressed like this is any other day.

“You’ve officially lost your mind,” Is all that Joe says to him, as Chris shrugs and reaches down to open his door.

The warm vineyard air hits his face as he steps out, into the sun drenching over the dirt packed ground. Chris sees the moment that Zach looks over and realizes that it’s Chris and Joe who have arrived. He grins and begins to get up off of the stairs, taking a few steps before he stops to sip his drink with one hand and brush the seat of his pants off with the other.

“You guys are early,” Zach calls, sounding a little off-handed as he steps to the side as a particularly large floral arrangement begins its two person journey up the stairs and into the front hall. “I don’t even think that the photographer is here yet.”

Chris shrugs, already a little sweaty at the hairline, and squints into the sun beginning to stream over the top arch of the roof.

“It’s your big day, man,” Chris replies, letting himself grin back at Zach. When Zach drops their gaze Chris glances back over his shoulder, back to Joe who is still stooping half in and half out of the cab window as he pays their fare. Chris turns back to Zach and licks his lips, pausing before he forces himself to say, “You’ve got to realize that I’m still in love with you.”

From behind him, Chris hears Joe loudly intone, “Oh my god.”

“Excuse me?” Zach asks, already sounding a little hysterical. Both of his eyebrows jerk up before he recovers, looking over his shoulder to make sure that the caterers didn’t hear that particular declaration. It’s obvious that they’re trying not to openly react at the bomb that Chris has dropped on this peaceful wedding venue. Zach turns back to Chris, and snaps, “It’s eleven in the morning, are you drunk already?”

Chris shakes his head, and adjusts his posture, trying to stand tall. He won’t slink away from this, not this time.

He looks Zach in the face, and replies, “I’m sinking with the ship. I’ve watched you get married every day for the last four months straight. Every single day you have left me. I have tried to get through to you, but nothing works. So today, I just wanted to make sure that you knew. I’m still in love with you.”

“You’ve gone insane,” Zach answers, mouth dropping open. The tone of his voice betrays his anger for confusion as he looks over Chris’ shoulder, to where Joe is now making his way up the short driveway. “Did you drop him on his head, Joe? Fuck.”

Chris takes a step forward, and then another, until he’s standing on the step right below Zach. All of a sudden Chris is close enough to realize that Zach looks like he’s seen a ghost. His skin is pale, white, clearly unnerved as his mouth trembles and he fumbles over himself, sipping at his drink and trying to look anywhere but at Chris.

“Man, maybe we should just go,” Joe tries to say, always the peace keeper. He touches the back of Chris’ shoulder. “I’ll cab back with you to the hotel.”

Slapping Joe’s hand away, Chris shakes his head sharply, and then turns to take the drink out of Zach’s hand. It’s empty, but now there’s nothing for Zach to distract himself with - he doesn’t have anything that he can place between he and Chris.

“You need to listen to me, because right now I don’t know how else to get through to you,” Chris says again, steadying his gaze at Zach. Zach makes a pinched face and glances away, but then he looks back at Chris like he’s being drawn back with a magnet. “I will watch you leave me - every day, forever - but I can’t do it anymore with you not knowing how I feel. It’s worse that way, and maybe that makes me selfish, but I need you to know that this time.”

Zach laughs all of a sudden, unamused as he smacks Chris away and snaps, “You’ve lost your mind. You’re actually insane, right now - like, I knew you were nuts, but this is really pushing it. Because you know what? If you’re going to pull this shit on me, now of all times, you can get out. You can get the fuck out.”

“You don’t get to do that,” Chris replies, voice sharp as he shoves back at Zach, knuckles in his chest. “You don’t get to shut me out. You don’t get to abandon me again.”

That makes something inside of Zach snap. Joe even makes a ‘woah’ noise when it happens. Because one second Zach is standing there, a little agitated, but the next he’s hot eyed and fucking _over it_ as he snatches the empty glass out of Chris’ hand and throws it down against the ground. It shatters absolutely everywhere, exploding like a bomb. Chris cringes at the loud noise that it makes, and then Zach steps forward, directly into Chris’ space. The glass crunches beneath his foot.

“I can do whatever the fuck I want,” He says, voice low, steady, but Chris doesn’t take a step back. He stands still, strong, his feet planted in the ground like maybe this is where he should have been all along, like he is made of tree roots and an immovable force. Zach doesn’t seem to get this memo. Instead he stares Chris in the face and adds, “Because you aren’t my damage anymore.”

Chris grimaces - it hurts - but feels the hot burst inside when that same tangled rope of emotion coils deep in his body.

All of a sudden he’s angry, he’s absolutely dripping with it, but - more than any other feeling - he’s desperate. Desperate to flip this coin, and find the side of them that is not the copper flavored one that sits between them in this moment.

“That is where you are totally wrong,” Chris answers, his voice steady. Calm. “Because I will always be your damage. You will never shake me off, Zach, because I’m not going to let go of you. I have carried you with me, every single day, since the moment you walked out on me. So don’t you ever, ever think that I will no longer affect you. Because we both know you’re not a very good liar.”

Zach’s nostrils flare, eyes cold. Chris feels about ten feet tall, and smirks. From his periphery, he sees someone walk by the three of them with a teetering stack of wooden chairs.

“Guys,” Joe tries to interject, the natural mediator, but he sounds far away, almost imaginary.

After a second Zach finally seems to pull himself back together. He glances away from Chris’ face, eyes flickering like the moving hands of a clock, and recovers, exhaling as he runs a shaky hand through his hair and takes a step back.

“Zach,” Chris tries, his voice softer, quieter this time.

Shaking his head, Zach glances over at Chris and takes another step back. The further that he moves away from Chris, the faster Chris realizes Zach is slipping away. Zach finally replies, but his voice sounds broken, hollow, rough from all of the shouting as he says, “Please don’t make this harder for me.”

“What?” Joe blurts, raising his eyebrows.

Chris frowns, lips trembling as he feels himself beginning to get upset. He feels his eyes soften and his heart betray him. Zach sighs and rubs the palms of his hands over his face, inhaling, exhaling again and again and again as all three of them stand there in varying states of shock. After a moment of silence Zach finally turns back towards the house, looking upset with himself as he starts up the short set of steps.

“Zach,” Chris calls out, and it’s funny how things change on the flip of a dime. He feels hopeless, lost. He calls again, “Zach!”

But it doesn’t matter. Zach is gone, just like the first time. He disappears back through the front door of the venue and Chris is left standing there, broken glass at his feet, his hands still shaking from the rush of adrenaline he’d been flooded with when his body had felt Zach’s step so close to him.

For one moment in time, he had been back under Zach’s skin again.

“I’ve gotta…” Joe starts, but quickly cuts himself off as he hurries up the front steps behind Zach. For one hysterical moment Chris thinks, he’s right. The tailor definitely adjusted his pants way too tight.

Sighing, Chris walks forward until he can sit down on the bottom step, and hunches forward to rest his head in his hands.

~

Chris, understandably, does not stand in the ceremony that afternoon.

In the cab back to the hotel by himself, he finally receives a text from Zach.

_You were too late. It’s not fair but I didn’t know what else to say. I don’t know what else to say._

His chest feels heavy, dark. Chris rests his forehead against the window, and watches the highway rush by outside.

~

The next morning, Chris is the one who wakes Joe up.

“My flight was delayed overnight, so I’m just getting into town now,” Chris lies, kicking the blankets out from around his legs as he gets out of bed, early morning light just beginning to stream in between the curtains. “I’ll just meet you at the vineyard. Can you do me a favor and pick up my suit? I don’t think I need any alterations after all.”

It’s easy to throw Joe off, but Chris knows that Zach won’t be so easy.

~

Chris texts Zach around eight o’clock that morning.

If Zach’s current morning routine is anything like the one that Chris remembers, Zach has probably already been up for at least an hour and a half, walking the dogs and reading the New York Times on his iPad. This is why it isn’t a total surprise when Chris receives an almost immediate response from Zach a few minutes later, as he’s bent over at the foot of his bed, tying the laces on his sneakers.

To be honest, Zach’s response surprises him. He had been hoping for the best, but he hadn’t exactly thought that Zach would agree to meet him for coffee this morning - not when he was set to get married in less than six hours.

So, three city blocks later, Chris meets Zach outside of an outdoor coffee shop.

“Hey, morning. I really like your shoes. You look great,” Zach smiles, still looking a little shell shocked at Chris’ early hour invitation. They share a quick one armed hug that sends electricity through Chris’ bones, before Zach pulls back and asks, “Did you already order our coffee?”

Our coffee. The implied intimacy of even sharing a meal with Zach sends Chris’ brain spinning, and he feels his cheeks heat up as he nervously scratches at the back of his head and then gestures at the two mugs of coffee he’s already secured from inside.

As a bonafide New York native, Zach had agreed to meet Chris closer to his hotel than what might have been strictly necessary if Chris knew how to navigate the city well, if at all.

“Yeah, hope you don’t mind. I got you a soy latte, even though these ones definitely look a little more complicated than I’m used to,” Chris answers, trying to laugh off the nervous tension coursing through his body. Zach looks at him - like, really looks at him, for a second - and then nods, a faint smile on his face as he reaches down to pull out his seat.

Zach starts to sit down, and then pauses halfway to his chair to pull his sunglasses off, and tuck them into the V of his t-shirt.

“Well, you do know I live and die for a good soy latte,” Zach agrees, glancing up at Chris as Chris awkwardly stands around for a second too long before he pulses a laugh and then dips to sit down. One hand curling around the side of his cooled coffee mug, Zach looks up at Chris curiously, and watches as Chris adjusts the neck of his t-shirt self consciously. “Are you alright? You look… a little sweaty, to be honest.”

A wave of nausea courses through Chris’ body at Zach’s observation. 

It’s just, you know - he got Zach to meet him, finally, which hasn’t happened since, well, forever. Ultimately half of him knows that even if he fucks up, he’ll have another chance to do all of this over again tomorrow. The other half of him, well. That half isn’t so sure.

“I’m a little anxious,” Chris nods, going for honesty as he wipes his palms off on the thighs of his jeans underneath the table. He can’t drink this coffee, fuck, his heart will explode with the way it’s already pounding way too fast. “I’m anxious, and I’m also pretty confident you’re going to think I have totally - like, legit - lost my mind.”

That makes Zach laugh a little. He obviously doesn’t realize Chris isn’t being facetious, then. He glances over at Chris and then shrugs, twisting his coffee mug around by the handle a little before he replies, “You know I’m an open book, man. Try me.”

“Well,” Chris starts, immediately, before pausing to lick his lips. Suddenly all of that insane shit he pulled, like objecting to the ceremony and walking up and down the reception table tops seems like it happened to a completely different person about a million years ago. Chris purses his lips and then continues, “For the last few months, every day has been the same. The exact same. Like… groundhog day, I guess.”

Zach pauses, and raises one eyebrow. “Like the movie?”

“Kind of,” Chris shrugs. It isn’t the perfect comparison - and he knows this, because he’d recently watched the movie one night at the hotel, thanks pay per view - but for this purpose, it works well enough. “I flew to New York from California four months ago. The first morning I woke up here, it was the day of your wedding.”

Now he’s beginning to lose Zach. Chris can see it happening in the confused wrinkle of Zach’s forehead as Zach raises his eyebrows and clarifies, “Like… when you woke up this morning.”

“This morning, sure. And yesterday morning. And the morning before that,” Chris explains, trying to choose his words carefully so he doesn’t sound completely hysterical or outright crazy. Besides to Joe, this is the first time he has ever really said any of this stuff out loud. He knows how insane - seriously, committed to a ward _insane_ \- he sounds. “For four months. Over and over, maybe a hundred times.”

Zach frowns again, and watches Chris’ face as he mulls the concept over in his brain. “And it’s always the same day?”

“Yes. At first I thought it was deja vu, but it kept happening and things never changed,” Chris explains, shrugging his shoulders as he bows his head and looks down into his drink. The string lights hung overhead reflect back in the dark liquid. “Every morning I wake up, and I watch you get married. And every day, I get my heart broken - but, you know, after a while, it started to hurt a little less and a little less, and one day it didn’t hurt at all. A few days ago I watched you leave me like it was a bus leaving a bus stop, because I knew I’d have to watch the same thing happen again, and again, and again.”

When Chris looks up from his coffee cup, he realizes that Zach is openly staring back at him. 

His face is curious, now, one eyebrow arched as he leans an elbow against the edge of the tabletop, and asks, “You’ve watched me get married before?”

“A hundred times,” Chris nods, and then chuckles a little at the memory. “I objected once.”

That makes Zach laugh out loud, surprised as he boggles across the table at Chris, clearly scandalized, and asks, “You’re kidding, right? Did you really? What happened?”

“You got married anyways,” Chris shrugs. That particular night ranked pretty low. It was probably on the list for his five least favorite weddings he’d attended so far. That first night would always, always be the worst. “Joe put me in a cab. I wasn’t even drunk, man.”

Zach cringes at that - wait until Chris tells him about that first best man’s speech, Chris thinks - and wrinkles his nose a little bit, replying, “Ouch, sorry. Was that recently?”

“It was a while ago,” Chris lies. It wasn’t that long ago, but he’d stopped being able to keep track by the end of the first month. After the first few weeks it had all begun to seem inescapable, like it was pointless to document any of it all after everything began to blend together so easily. “I used to do things to try and break up the repetition, and, you know. That was one of my less thought out ideas.”

There’s a lull in their conversation as Chris thinks back to that night. How he had burst into the venue, and how it had happened just like it always did in the movies - a loud bang, everyone’s attention torn away from the front of the room as they’d all focused on Chris instead, red cheeked and out of breath. He’d run in from the cab, cause it had been one of those days where he’d caught a ride without Joe, chest heaving as he’d pointed his finger at Zach and shouted, ‘I object.’

The words absolutely horrify him now. He cringes at the memory, and is glad that this Zach wasn’t there to witness it.

“Well,” Zach starts, interrupting Chris’ thoughts. “What happens today?”

Chris pauses, a little thrown off at Zach’s question. What happens today? Well, Chris assumes that Zach is just going to go ahead and get married, just like every other day. But before Chris watches that happen, he has to - he’s gotta…

“I can’t just watch you go anymore,” Chris finally answers, watching Zach’s hands as Zach twists his mug around again, moving so he can drink from the last spot that still has foam. Chris’ gaze flickers up and he looks at Zach’s face, brown eyes warm and familiar, watching him back. “I can’t just let you walk away from me again. If I ask you a question, would you answer it honestly?”

Making a ‘go for it’ expression, Zach raises one eyebrow when Chris doesn’t immediately continue, and replies, “I’ll try. Though I have to admit, this sounds like a trick.”

“It’s not a trick. Do you want to marry Miles?” Chris asks, tongue feeling heavy in his mouth. 

He forces the words out, almost stumbles over them as he stares into Zach’s face hopelessly. Zach’s face changes expression almost immediately. It goes from soft and warm to confused, blank, and absolutely riddled with caution.

Zach pauses, and it’s right then that Chris realizes this is an important moment for them both. Zach pauses. He doesn’t flip the table. He doesn’t throw his coffee in Chris’ lap. He doesn’t lash out at Chris’ inappropriate question. Zach pauses.

And then he blinks. After a moment, he finally answers, “It isn’t that easy.”

“It should be though, right?” Chris asks, because now he’s a bird with a worm and he can’t let this go.

Zach’s guarded expression begins to coast right into uncomfortable territory. Chris sees the exact moment that it shifts, and then the shutters go up, closing Zach off from the outside. Right now, Chris is the outside. Zach frowns a little bit and then glances down, clearly considering his words before he tilts his head to the side and explains, “The relationship I have with Miles is different than the relationship I had with you.”

“This isn’t an interview, you know,” Chris says, voice quiet. He leans back in his chair. “You can be honest with me.”

Frowning, Zach replies, “I am being honest with you. Do you think I’m lying? I don’t want to be alone anymore, and you know what? More importantly, Miles isn’t some object that signifies a road block between you and I. He’s an incredible person.”

“Incredible,” Chris huffs, trying not to roll his eyes. This is some Vogue level bullshit that Zach is rolling out to him. For a second Chris has flashbacks to the first movie, when Zach had tip-toed around relationship questions and used every trick in the book to avoid the answers. “Right. How is any of this fair to him? Why is it fair for you to get married to somebody that you aren’t unequivocally attracted to?”

Snorting, Zach actually does roll his eyes before he asks, “Who are you, Cher Horowitz?”

“No,” Chris frowns, even though Zach’s off-handed remark does make him feel about one inch tall.

He opens his mouth to continue - to volley back - but Zach steamrolls him, and cuts Chris off as he continues, “This isn’t a Disney movie, Chris. It’s not a romantic comedy. This is my life, and it’s your life, and buying me one coffee is not going to change all of the hurtful shit that you and I have done to one another. There’s too much damage. I love you. You’re one of my best friends, but I would never be able to open myself up to that again.”

“Zach,” He tries to interrupt, alarm bells beginning to ring in his head. To be completely honest, Chris is beginning to feel a little righteous at being the one thing in common with all of Zach’s assumptions. “Realistically - ”

But, as usual, Zach is one step ahead of him. He cuts Chris off again, a total bulldozer of a man, and repeats, “ _Realistically_ , I’m going to marry Miles this afternoon. And I’m sorry that all of this is happening to you - I seriously, really am - but like, what do you want me to do, man? Marry you instead? I can’t save you, Chris. Our relationship wouldn’t change anything.”

“Would you shut the fuck up and let me talk for one fraction of a second?” Chris finally snaps, almost knocking his own coffee over as he lurches up from his seat, eyes bright and blue and honestly probably a little bit crazy looking as he stares at Zach and vys for one moment of his time. Zach, startled, looks back at him. “I need you to shut up - just, stop talking - for one minute, and listen to me. Like, really listen to me, Zach, because this is important.”

Zach pauses, and then nods, voice quiet, subdued, “I’m listening.”

“Thank you,” Chris exhales, letting all of his breath out in one go. He feels the tension drain from his chest almost immediately, even though his hands are still coursing with adrenaline. “I’m not asking for a post-mortem of our relationship, alright? I don’t care about what happened a year ago, or when we first met, or what you had for dinner last night. I do care that you’re lukewarm about Miles, at best.”

That seems to take the wind out of Zach’s sails. He continues to sit quietly, alternating between looking at the contents of his coffee mug and Chris’ expression as Chris continues to speak.

“I get that you love him,” Chris continues, voice soft as he leans a little further over the table. “I loved the last few people that I dated in the same way. They were perfectly fine additions to my life, and I was happy to wake up to them in the morning. I never even wanted to rip their heads off in the same way that I have wanted to do to yours in the past.”

Zach laughs a little bit, embarrassed but understanding. His mouth curls up into a little smile and he snorts, “You’re really painting me a picture here.”

“I’m trying, man. I’m not asking you to marry me instead of Miles,” Chris sighs, watching Zach’s face as Zach’s smile fades into a neutral expression, and then that disappears into a tight frown. Chris is getting through to him, and Zach’s frown is confirmation of that. “I’m not even asking for you to run off into the sunset with me. I’m just saying that I have been here, in this day, a hundred times. And every day you marry Miles, and every day you seem perfectly content, and everyday everything seems absolutely fine.”

Chris pauses to clear his throat. His voice is starting to sound tight, he’s starting to get emotional, and there is absolutely nothing that he can do to stop it. He licks his lips, trying to regroup, and then continues, voice warbling, “Every day I do some dumb fucking thing, or nothing at all, and I just sit there, thinking about how much I miss you. And every time I sit there, all that I can think of, is why the fuck don’t you miss me back?”

“Chris,” Zach whispers, the name a knee-jerk reaction as he watches Chris break, and cut himself off. Chris clears his throat again, eyes a little bit watery as he glances between the tabletop and Zach’s face.

In that moment the silence that hangs between them is heavy and deep like the ocean. Zach is absolutely frozen above his cup of coffee, one hand poised in the air, and across the table Chris realizes that he can hardly breathe. His lungs are tight, and his heart is beating at about a million miles an hour. He looks back across the table, and faces his biggest fear.

“I miss you every day,” Zach finally says after a moment, doing the same. His voice is so rough, so low, that Chris feels it deep in his bones.

Frowning, mouth still trembling as he tries to keep his emotions under control, Chris blinks a few times and then grits his teeth together. He thinks about every fight they ever had. He thinks about every time Zach ever kissed him. He thinks about all those moments where he had thought Zach had been the one, and that they’d be together forever. And then he thinks about how stupid he must have been, to ever think about any of that at all.

“Then why don’t you want me?” Chris blurts out, and now his heart has taken to triple time, a hammer in his chest.

The question surprises them both.

“Don’t,” Zach whispers. He is suddenly visibly - viciously - upset. He shakes his head and frowns, and then pushes an inch away from the table and shakes his head. For a moment his system is on overdrive, and it clear that it has no idea what path it wants to lead his brain down.

Chris grimaces as Zach shoves his chair back, making a loud noise against the floor. He continues, “Answer me.”

“Goddamnit, Chris. I want you, okay?” Zach answers, his voice sharp, low, as he gets up out of his chair and then leans across the table so he can lower the volume of his voice. “I think about you every day. I can’t ever shake you, and there is absolutely no point in trying because you are still my best friend and co-star. My stupid fucking brother talks to you on the reg, my mother still brings you up at every meal - ”

Eyebrows raising, Chris can’t help but asking, “Your mom asks about me?”

“Not the point. Stop trying to fucking _break me_ , Chris,” Zach snaps, still leaning forward even though his voice is getting progressively louder as he shoves away from the table and wipes his eyes. He fully stands up and then looks down at Chris, who is now openly boggling up at him. “My entire life is on thin ice right now, and you are not going to be the one who makes me pump the breaks. Not again.”

 

“Zach,” Chris tries to say, but it’s too late. Zach heads for the sidewalk, already flagging down a cab.

~

Chris foots the bill for both of their coffees, even though neither of them drank much, and then walks back to his hotel.

He sits in the lobby by himself for a long time, thinking, and trying to work up the nerve to text Zach. He watches people come and go, couples and businessmen and a bridal shower party checking in for the weekend. For a while it’s easy to sit there, to day dream with his phone in one hand.

Finally, he works up the balls to send Zach a text message.

_I’m sorry. I’ll be there tonight to watch you, unless you tell me not to come._

The message sends and Chris sighs, leaning his head back against the couch cushions to stare up at the ornate lobby ceiling instead. He hadn’t been sure how that would go, but he definitely hadn’t expected that. Chris will go, tonight, one more time in a long row of ‘one more nights.’ When he wakes up tomorrow morning, he will text Zach again. He will keep trying until he gets it right.

The universe has been waving one gigantic “fuck you, Chris” foam finger at him for the last few weeks, but Chris isn’t about to stop fighting now. He has all the time in the world.

After getting up off of the couch, Chris stops to have a drink at the hotel bar before he goes upstairs to change into his suit.

Zach is getting married to Miles tonight, and Chris is going to be there to see it.

~

War drums are pounding in the back of Chris’ head as the taxi rolls up the dirt path that leads to the vineyard.

It looks decidedly less alive today than it has in all of the days passed that Chris can remember. Up until this morning there have been people running around with flower arrangements, orchestra members lugging instruments in heavy black cases, staff members carrying crates of expensive wine glasses; but today, the only life outside the building is a grey cat that wanders along the bottom step, curving its tail along the wooden edge.

“Thanks, man,” Chris says, handing the cab driver a few twenties as he cracks the door open and gets out. One foot presses down against the dirt packed out, and Chris thinks: this is it. This is the same cab that he and Joe have ridden in a hundred times, on a hundred different days while having a hundred different conversations.

But today, as Chris takes in the front doors looming in front of him, he feels his stomach flip and sink in a new way.

Everything is different today. This is the first day where Zach has outright rejected him, basically called him crazy for harboring any kind of feelings for Zach at all. The weather seems to know it, too. The wind isn’t blowing in the same way that it usually is, and it makes the whole vineyard seem like some kind of long forgotten ghost town. 

Back to the start, Chris thinks, taking a deep breath as the cab pulls away.

He bypasses the cat - he’s always been a little bit allergic, to be honest - and pushes open the unlocked front door.

“Hello?” Chris calls, still a little weirded out by the lack of human bodies running around. He pushes the door halfway open, and then wide.

The door creaks as it opens all of the way. Chris can’t help but frown at the distinct haunted house vibe he gets, but he soldiers on, stepping forward over the threshold as he looks around the cavernous front hallway. He knows this place like the back of his hand, now, but seeing it so empty is still unnerving.

Scratching the back of his neck nervously, Chris glances around again, and then shrugs, murmuring, “Alright.”

With nothing better to do, he heads into the sitting room first. The last time he saw it, the bakers had been standing in the middle of the room fussing over the wedding cake, which had apparently not done so well in transit. To say Chris’ is shocked when he sees its contents today would be an understatement.

Zach is sitting in one of the leather couches beneath the bay windows, decidedly alone. He’s drinking, with is either a good or bad sign depending on how you look at it, but he doesn’t seem all that surprised to see Chris standing there.

He’s still wearing the same outfit that he had on when he met for Chris coffee.

“Zach?” Chris asks, completely at a loss for words as he watches Zach pulse a tight smile and take a sip of his drink. He can’t quite figure out how to make himself move forward, so he looks around the room instead, almost expecting to see Miles sitting at the piano or staring out the opposite windows. Chris can’t see anything other than Zach’s wedding cake, wheeled into a corner and forgotten, a white sheet draped across it like a body in a morgue. “Sorry, what’s going on, exactly?”

Frowning, Zach rubs at the back of his neck, and then raises his eyebrows. It sounds easy when he says, “I called it off.”

“What? What? You… what?” Chris bumbles, his brain immediately short circuiting. His eyebrows shoot up into his hairline and he can almost feel his tongue trip over itself as he finally manages to take one step forward, and then another, and then another, until he’s stumbling towards Zach like a foal, completely unaware of anything else in the room. He’s not sure why, but Chris asks, “When?”

Zach shrugs, and takes another sip from his drink before he pushes himself up from the couch. There’s a bar cart a few feet away, and that seems to be where Zach’s heading, towards the already uncapped bottle of JD sitting against the glass top.

“This morning. Everybody already knows,” Zach finally explains, as he stoops down to pour himself a half a glass. As an after thought he steps back, and snags another glass from the shelf on the bottom of the cart. “I told Joe not to tell you. My mom was pretty upset, Miles was okay.”

 _My mom was pretty upset, Miles was okay,_ echoes in Chris’ head for a minute, and then all of a sudden it feels like a bolt of thunder has ripped through him. His nervous system goes into overdrive and his head swims. For a second he has no idea what Zach could possibly want from him when Zach sets the empty glass down on the bar cart top, and then gestures down to it with one hand.

“Good,” Chris finally manages to nod, taking a step forward. A step, a step, another step. Suddenly he’s right beside Zach, so close they could touch hands if they really wanted to, and he swallows, looking over at Zach stupidly as he reaches for the glass. “About Miles, I mean. Not… not your mom.”

Zach shrugs one shoulder, and thumbs the booze cap back onto the bottle. “She’ll get over it. I didn’t think you were coming for a minute. Are you always late?”

“Joe usually calls the cab, but I always come,” Chris says, which startles a laugh out of Zach. Without thinking, Chris reaches down to pick up the glass of whisky that Zach poured him, and then elaborates, rolling his eyes, “Alright, that’s not totally true. I actually didn’t come one time, but it was only because we got into this huge fight in front of Joe. Even the florist was looking at me weird, and - ”

And Chris’ glass tumbles to the carpet between their feet, its landing cushioned by the ancient weave as Zach grabs him by the forearm and pulls his entire body forward. Chris is completely horrified for a moment, totally unsure of what Zach is trying to do, but then he feels Zach’s mouth on his, and Zach’s thumb on his jaw as Zach angles Chris’ head towards his own.

They stand there for a moment - like all of those moments before this one, moments where Chris has watched Zach walk away, moments where Chris had stood there for an eternity as he got his suit hemmed, moments where Chris had watched Zach say “I do” over and over in this universe where everything happened but nothing ever counted - and they kiss for a long time, for long enough that Chris feels that desperate rock in the bottom of his stomach begin to shrink and disappear.

“I didn’t mean to spill your drink,” Zach finally says, as they move away from one another, even though Zach’s hand is still curved along Chris’ face. They both laugh, Zach shaking his head a little at himself, as he kneels down to pick up the now empty glass. He looks up at Chris’ face and explains, “I guess I didn’t know that I was going to do that until I saw you standing there.”

Chris, dazed, licks his lips and nods down at Zach. He manages to say, “That’s okay. Jesus Christ. That’s okay.”

“We should go,” Zach says, standing up and setting the empty glass down on the bar cart. He hesitates, and then reaches for his own glass, and takes one last sip of his drink. As he swallows he turns around to face Chris, and sighs, “We need to talk.”

Still thrumming from the kiss, Chris laughs, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. And then he nods.

~

They make the mutual decision to go back to Chris’ hotel, because it seems completely inappropriate to have this conversation in the same venue that Zach had been planning to get married in. Even though, Zach jokes, he had already paid for the deposit and definitely would not be getting the rental fee back.

Chris orders room service for their dinner - margarita pizza, grilled veggies, and a four pack of beer - and then tries to make the bed he’d abandoned this morning as Zach wanders around the room.

“They said it should be twenty minutes max,” Chris says absently, mostly to fill in the quiet that has fallen over them both. He stands up straight, throws the last decorative pillow up against the headboard, and then pauses before he says, “I’m just going to get out of this suit.”

Zach looks distracted as he turns away from the table he’d been looking at - a surface which largely housed the magazines Chris had purchased for the cab ride into the city, and the travel sized bottle of ibuprofen he’d picked up at the airport - and nods, scrubbing a hand through his hair. 

“Sure, take your time,” He nods, finally turning to sit down at the edge of the bed. He looks a little frayed around the edges, but mostly calm, centered on the inside. A new version of classic Zach. “Take as much time as you need.”

Nodding, Chris grabs the t-shirt and shorts he had been wearing yesterday, and heads in the direction of the bathroom. As he moves he feels his adrenaline spike, coursing thick through his veins as he moves. Absolutely none of this feels real. He doesn’t know how it’s possible, but it feels even less real than the last few months have.

Once he is inside the bathroom, Chris changes quickly. 

He hangs his suit up on the shower curtain rod, and then pulls his shorts and t-shirt on instead. It’s almost methodical, pulling these clothes that he hasn’t worn in months onto his body. It’s strange, practically new again.

After the clothes, he pauses to study his reflection in the mirror. The bags underneath his eyes are particularly troubling, so he decides to splash a little bit of cold water on his face. With his hands still damp from the tap water, he runs his fingers through his hair, too, a brief attempt to coax himself into looking a little less crazy than how he currently feels inside.

Despite all of this, Chris still looks wound up and nervous when he looks at himself one last time in the mirror. He wonders if Zach feels the way that he does now; totally on edge, absolutely wound up with the possibility of it all.

Before he moves to go back into the other room, Chris pauses to take a long, deep breath. This is important.

This is so, so important. This could be something big, something great. A brand new chapter, and ultimately, the ending that he has been searching for. Chris can’t fuck this up. Not after everything. Not after every single day that came before this one, every night that he fell asleep alone and every morning that he woke up knowing what the rest of the day would bring.

Chris takes a deep breath, and opens the bathroom door.

He’s not sure what he was expecting to see, but he finds Zach still sitting on the bed. He’s watching TV, now, remote rested in a hand against his knee as he flips through each channel. Chris can’t help but lurk a little bit, standing quietly and watching as Zach pauses on the Food Network.

“I’m back,” Chris finally says, fully walking back into the room. He unbuckles the watch from around his wrist, and pauses to drop it alongside the rest of his belongings on the bed side table.

Zach looks over and smiles, this slow pulse that doesn’t quite stretch across his whole face, but warms Chris right down to his bones anyways. As Chris approaches the bed Zach moves, twisting around until there’s enough room for Chris to sit down beside him at the foot of the bed.

“I appreciate you calling me out,” Zach starts out, carefully, like he’s measuring the words out as he says them. “I would have been terrified to do the same if I had been in your position.”

Shrugging, Chris replies, “I was. I was fucking terrified today, Zach. I had no idea how you were going to respond, but I just couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t watch you marry him again.”

“I understand,” Zach says, softly. Chris doesn’t think he does, but that’s okay. Chris looks over at him, and watches as he picks at the end of the feather poking through the seam of the down duvet as Zach continues, saying, “I spent a lot of time thinking about what I would have done if the situation were reversed. I know I wouldn’t have handled it in the same way that you did. I would have been… it would have been irreversibly messy.”

Chris bites his lip and reaches forward to tug the feather right out of the duvet. He holds it out for Zach, and catches Zach’s eye to explain, “I would never marry somebody that wasn’t you.”

“You don’t know that,” Zach admonishes, even though he sounds quiet, a little bit embarrassed that Chris has caught him. He takes the feather out of Chris’ fingers and twists it between his, turning the little down feather into a soft stick. “You could fall in love with somebody tomorrow, Chris, it happens because that’s what humans do.”

Chris shakes his head and stretches his legs out, leaning back on the bed with both elbows sinking into the duvet.

“Not this guy,” He says simply, raising his eyebrows. He doesn’t miss the way that Zach’s gaze travels down to his stomach, not thinking, before it snaps back up to his face. “I wasn’t the same after we split up. I get that there are some people that you just never get over, but you were different. I just realized one day, it’s always been you man. I don’t know why. I don’t know who made that happen for me. It’s just how it is.”

Looking a little embarrassed despite himself, Zach flicks the twisted up feather to the ground and then turns, so they’re more face to face than they had been before, despite the fact that Chris is in a reclined, stretched out position across the bed.

“I know I haven’t shown it, but I do feel the same way about you,” Zach admits, pulling his other leg up onto the bed, so he’s sitting cross legged by Chris’ thighs. This is new and strange, because they have no idea how to handle one another anymore, now that there are no roadblocks to keep them in place. “I wouldn’t be opposed to trying it again. For real this time.”

A little smirk twists its way across Chris’ face. He doesn’t mean for it to happen, but it’s all so ridiculous, now that everything is actually happening, Chris wants to crack some kind of joke. He doesn’t do that, though. Because Zach is trying, just like Chris is trying, and Zach’s voice is so rough, so exhausted sounding, that Chris wonders how long the conversation he’d had with Miles this afternoon was.

“Well,” Chris says after a moment of silence, digging his elbows a little further into the mattress. “I am pretty irresistible.”

That makes Zach laugh, loud and genuine, and just like that his self conscious posture fades. He crumples to the side instead, stretching himself out so he’s laying lengthwise beside Chris. He raises his eyebrows and props his head onto one hand as he looks down at Chris’ face and adds, “Also a jerk, but irresistible works as well.”

“Both are synonymous,” Chris smiles, voice soft. He feels his face heat up a little bit when he catches the way that Zach is staring at him, his expression warm - _fond_. Chris licks his lips, and raises his eyebrows, and then adds, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Zach smiles at him again, and Chris knows that he’s never meant anything more.

~

Room service arrives like clock work, so they share it on the bed, turning the TV up enough that they can both hear it. 

Zach finds a documentary on _Twin Peaks_ , and they watch that in rapt silence, splitting the pizza down the middle and spooning the veggies right out of the silver tray.

They’ve both always had a weird thing for Laura Palmer, and tonight, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Zach up against the headboard, Chris has never felt more pop culturally connected with him since they both let it spill that their favorite Simpsons episodes were anything that had to do with Treehouse of Horror.

“What are you, a child?” Zach asks, sounding horrified when he discovers Chris’ pile of pizza crusts, layered in and around the napkin that he had been wiping his greasy fingers on between bites.

Chris, grinning and sated and now leaning against the headboard with two hands folded over his stomach, raises his eyebrows and nods, unable to stop the warm feeling from blooming in his face when he sees Zach: hair messy, clothes wrinkled, and most importantly, at the foot of his bed.

“I hate that shit,” Chris says simply, wiggling his toes. Zach pauses and gives him this - this smile - and there’s nothing that strange about it, but it’s so different from the way that Zach usually looks at him. Chris feels it, physically, creep from his toes to his shoulders to his brain, and he knows, in that moment, that Zach is looking at him differently. Zach is looking at him as though he’s a part, another piece, and not just Chris, that complicated portion of his life. Unable to cope with the heat that floods him, Chris adds, “Don’t forget the beer.”

Zach cleans up their dishes as best he can, stacking everything on the service cart before bending over to snag their last two beers out of the little ice bucket on the bottom row.

“Got it,” He says softly, almost talking to himself, before he turns back to the bed and steps up onto it, his feet sinking into the blankets as he walks back over to Chris and then kneels beside him, handing one of the two beers over. Chris has been working with the bottle opener on his side of the bed, so he reaches for it and opens Zach’s beer before opening his own. Zach lets himself settle back into his spot as he intones, “My hero.”

Smiling, Chris bumps their shoulders together, and adds, “You know it.”

~

They lay stretched out on the bed a few hours later. The lights are dimmed and the TV is off, and all that Chris can hear is the sound of the street below the window and the steady rhythm of Zach breathing.

It feels like Chris has stumbled across the holy ground. This is one event in a long series of moments that Chris had just succumbed to thinking he would never get to experience again, the way that Zach’s fingers comb through his hair, and the sleepy, sated way that his own brain floats as Zach keeps them close.

They spend a long time laying just like that: lips pressed together and then not, Chris’ mouth against the curve of Zach’s throat and then not, Zach’s hands gripping at the back of Chris’ head and then not. They lay like that until the dusk fully turns over to dark outside, and they reach to turn the bedside lamps off, ready for sleep.

“Just in case this is the last time,” Chris whispers, pressing one more kiss against Zach’s mouth.

And then he settles down, snuggling in low to fall asleep.

~

The next morning, Chris wakes up to the sound of someone with a heavy Brooklyn accent yelling outside.

“You left the window open,” Zach grumbles, rolling over, further into Chris. He wipes one hand clumsily against his sleep rumpled face as Chris mumbles something back and then shakes his head, trying to burrow further into the warmth he finds against Zach’s chest.

It takes a moment, a beat. But then something clicks loudly in the very back part of Chris’ brain.

“What day is it today?” He blurts, suddenly wide awake. His heart is pounding hard as he pushes himself up onto one elbow.

Zach is still laying beneath the covers, bed head in full effect as he reaches up to smooth one hand over the round part of Chris’ bare shoulder.

“It’s Monday. I was supposed to get married yesterday, which was Sunday,,” Zach explains, voice gravel low and heavily laden with sleep as he curls his fingers around and tugs at Chris’ shoulder again. Chris fumbles around on the bedside table for his phone, but doesn’t push Zach’s hand away. Zach wrinkles his forehead, and continues, “But today it’s Monday all day. What’s up with you?”

Chris finds his phone beneath the room service menu. He pushes the home button and turns his screen on - sure enough there are no missed calls from Joe, no pending alarms, and most significantly, no reminders to tell him what today is.

“No more wedding day,” Chris announces, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice as he grins and throws the phone off of the side of the bed. He watches it bounce against the carpet and then gets back underneath the covers, still laughing in shock and excitement as he realizes, “No more Sundays.”

Still half asleep, Zach pushes himself a little closer to Chris’ body, and yawns, one hand coming up to comb through the hair on the back of Chris’ head. He nods and yawns again, and then replies, “Groundhog day, right. Happy Monday, Chris.”

“Thanks,” Chris whispers at the ceiling, and even though he’s quiet, the word sounds loud within the confines of his own head.

It’s happening. This is real, Chris thinks, as his stomach flips in excitement. No do-overs this time.

Chris reaches for Zach’s free hand, still buried between them in the covers, and twists their fingers together. He doesn’t need to look to feel the smooth skin of Zach’s ring finger, empty of the wedding band that had been haunting Chris’ every waking moment up until yesterday at around this time. He grins. He can’t help it - everything feels brand new and unreal - and then closes his eyes once more.

Right now, Chris is going to sleep some more. And when he wakes up, they’re going to get up and go out for breakfast.

Because today? It’s a brand fucking new day, and Chris can’t wait to get it started.


End file.
